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Envy (2004)

Starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Rachel Weisz, and Christopher Walken.  Cinematography by Tim Maurice-Jones. Edited by Stu Linder and Blair Daily.  Produced by Paula Weinstein and Barry Levinson.  Written by Steve Adams. Directed by Barry Levinson.

Tim Dingman and Nick Vanderpark (played by Ben Stiller and Jack Black) are two normal guys living across the street from each other. While Tim is more down to earth and level-headed, Nick is a dreamer constantly coming up with ideas for ridiculous inventions. One day, on their commute to the sandpaper factory, Nick comes up with an idea to invent a spray that will make dog poop instantly disappear.

He enlists the help of a chemist friend of his and is soon hard at work developing what he refers to as “Vapoorize”. Wanting to keep his best friend involved, Nick asks Tim if he would like to co-invest in the project. Despite his wife’s encouragement Tim passes, no knowing that “Vapoorize” would soon make Nick a multi-millionaire. As Nick’s bank account increases, so does Tim’s envy of his best friend’s success.

The idea for Envy was pitched to Castle Rock Entertainment in November of 1999 by friends Steve Adams and Larry David. Apparently, the screenplay was inspired by the jealously that Adams’ experienced after David hit it big with the television series “Seinfeld”.  Barry Levinson came across a copy of the script and was interested in the fable-like story about the two friends. He soon jumped on board.

Castle Rock, who had produced David’s “Seinfeld”, optioned the script but soon filed it away after fixing its budget at a seemingly unfeasible forty million dollars. It was then picked up by Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks SKG, which is odd considering Levinson’s public criticism of DreamWorks after the failure of his An Everlasting Piece.  The picture was shot and then quickly shelved, this time for almost two years while DreamWorks decided what to do with it.  It almost ended up going straight to video when Jack Black’s rising popularity warranted it a spot in the theaters.

Now, We’re not going to use a pun like “this film should be sprayed with Vapoorize” or some variation thereof, but seriously… Envy is crap.  And that is so odd because it has so much going for it. One would think that any picture with the combined comedic stylings of Stiller, Black, Walken, Levinson, and David that something would come of it. But with Envy it just doesn’t happen.

The performances were fairly amusing, but without an interesting story to drive the characters it didn’t really matter. And Levinson’s direction was pretty solid, but again, without the story to back it up it doesn’t mean anything. One has to wonder what kind of mad editing sessions when on behind the scenes when half of the trailer doesn’t even show up in the film.  Anyway, defiantly skip Envy.

Budget: $40,000,000

Total US Gross: $13,548,322

Genre: Black Comedy

Runtime: 99 Minutes

US Release Date: 4/30/04

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Awards: none

Tagline: Success Didn’t Go To His Head, It Went To His Neighbor.

Quote: “Vapoorize.  It’s just like ‘vaporize’ only you add an ‘o’ so you got ‘poo’ right there in the middle.”