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Envy
EMAILPRINTDreamWorks Distribution LLC

Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 30 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 19 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy
Written by: Steve Adams
Directed by: Barry Levinson
Release Date:
Theatrical: April 30, 2004
DVD: September 28, 2004
Running Time: 99 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for language and sexual/crude humor
Starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Rachel Weisz, Amy Poehler, Christopher Walken, Ariel Gade, Sam Lerner, and Lily Jackson
Tim (Stiller) and Nick (Black) are best friends, neighbors and co-workers, whose equal footing is suddenly tripped up when one of Nick's harebrained get-rich-quick schemes actually succeeds: Vapoorizer, a spray that literally makes dog poop, or any other kind for that matter, evaporate into thin air. Tim, who had poo-pooed Nick's idea and passed on an opportunity to get in on the deal, can only watch as Nick's fortune -- and Tim's own envy -- grow to equally outrageous proportions. (DreamWorks)
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Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
The movie works fairly well as a pitch-dark comedy, and very well as a dead-on satire of upward mobility and its discontents.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Rick Kisonak
It may not feature the funniest performances Stiller, Walken and Black have ever given but, these three guys giving performances just this funny is enough to make Envy a movie you'll end up kicking yourself for missing.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
One of those cinematic curiosities that almost always fade quickly, but that will usually find a devoted cult audience once it hits that peculiar Elysian Field known as the aftermarket.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
The laughs tend to come in fits and starts, built around individual set pieces rather than being generated organically out of the storytelling.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Envy is in the unenviable position of saddling two of Hollywood's most talented comic actors with a script that doesn't do them justice.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Envy is such an ugly emotion, perhaps it deserves an ugly movie. Barry Levinson's Envy fills the bill - a mean-spirited black comedy saturated with dog-poo jokes and only intermittent yowls of mirth.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Black somehow feels reigned in; shaved and barbered, he's lost his anarchic passion and is merely playing a comic role instead of transforming it into a personal mission.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
[Walken's] every minute on screen is filled with that level of jittery invention, and, watching him at play, not even the flintiest temper could resist a wide grin. Envy can surely be a trial, but Saint Christopher is there to ease our troubled journey and see us smilingly home.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
Levinson, who has directed enough films to know better, should recognize a stinker of a script when he smells one: Instead clever laughs he serves up sloppy schtick, dead spots filled with lame ad-libbing and Walken crooning "The Happy Wanderer."
Read Full Review >LA Weekly John Patterson
Even the relatively successful pairing of neckless maestro of anxiety Stiller with the indomitably effervescent Black gets bogged down by Steve Adams' aimless screenplay. Would the Barry Levinson who once made "Diner" please wake up and pull himself together?
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Ultimately more amusing than hilarious, and sometimes less than that.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust
A woeful little comedy that runs out of steam shortly after its opening sequence.
Read Full Review >Variety Robert Koehler
Can't decide whether to be an eccentric black comedy or a middle-of-the-road diversion.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Mark Caro
Envy is a shaggy dog-poop story that'll make you wish you could spray something at the screen to make it disappear.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Envy makes a pretty entertaining three-minute trailer. If only they'd left it at that.
Read Full Review >New York Post Jonathan Foreman
There are a few chuckles here and there, and there are odd wisps of cleverness in the script by Steve Adams, but for the most part, Envy is a film that doesn't know where it's going.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
Squandered in foolish horseplay and on a story that zigzags so far out of control that it feels as if the screenwriter, Steve Adams, pasted together a bunch of zany notions in a frantic search for confusion.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Sara Gebhardt
With all the dog dung in Envy, it's almost too easy to generalize that it stinks. But it does, unfortunately, despite the big-name actors in its cast.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
With so many dubious elements at play, even the half-good ideas get lost in the shuffle.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
The most telling symptom of bad comedy is pretty easy to diagnose: no laughs.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Environmentalists are up in arms. "Where did the shit go?" they want to know. The answer is painfully obvious: into the screenplay.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Leaves you with the dismaying sensation that Levinson, who should probably be off making his own version of ''The Player,'' has instead crafted a comedy of self-loathing, burying himself in a movie that deserves to be Vapoorized.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
It's remarkably appropriate that Envy is about turds, because that's what the movie is.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The film is neither fish nor fowl nor some arresting new entity, but a lumpish coagulation of conflicting impulses and unrealized gestures.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Envy feels like a comedy in search of a drama in search of some sort of lugubrious existential meaning; it never quite seems to know where it's going to head next, and neither will the audience.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Stiller and Black have the chemistry of fingernails-on-blackboard and the movie is disastrously unfunny.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
A weirdly airless disaster, a turkey so insistently DOA that the dialogue serves as its own epitaph.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
In short, every element suggests Envy ought to be amusing, but the only comparably disastrous movie in recent memory involves Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, and a rapping retarded man.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 4.6 (out of 10) based on 19 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Matthew R. gave it an8:
The people that rate these movies have nothing better to do! This movie is way better than all those idiotic "gangsta movies."
Bilbo gave it a9:
How can you give this movie 31 I thought the plot of this movie was quite well planed out. Also both Jack Black did some very nice acting in this movie.
Sam gave it a7:
Jack Black and Ben Stiller are capable of being VERY funny, and in Envy they are, but it doesn't really introdouce to the ignorant their true genius.
Kyle K.. gave it a10:
Wow...that's all I can say really. This is one of those perfect movies. PERFECT 10. By far. OMO!
[Anonymous] gave it a7:
OK - Citizen Kane it's not, but this was an enjoyable movie. While I think the movie was short on plot, the performances made up for it. If you like that kind of humor, you'll like the movie. If not, you'll hate it. I liked it.
Captain Craig gave it a5:
Not the best film either star has done. But, enertaining in a rediculous kind of way.
Michael M. gave it a 4:
"Envy" is not a good film. It isn't a terrible movie, just nothing worth remembering. Even the strong comic duo of Ben Stiller (Meet the Parents, Zoolander) and Jack Black (School of Rock, High Fidelity) can't save this jumbled mess from tediousness. I'm not going to lie, the film has a few hard laughs, but that's it. The plot really stinks, and a lot of issues don't come together at the end. Watch for a hilarious performance by Christopher Walken as well ... a creepy guy. Wait to rent this one on DVD, trust me. It's not worth the nine bucks!
