Envy (2004)

Brilliant and touching

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Jack Black and Ben Stiller perform wonderfully, as does Christopher Walken. I won't go in to a long description. However, forget what the other critics say and give it a try. It really is great. It's bizarre, yes. And It's silly. It's also funny as he'll, despite what others may say. It's unique with its story, I've never seen another movie like this. I give this movie a 10 rating. I only wish it did better.

This movie has become one of my favorite comedies and I feel the need to express my opinion about it. I can understand if it's not your cup of tea, but I will never understand how anyone could HATE it; maybe audiences had certain expectations because of Jack Black and Ben Stiller. It has a simple yet very original plot for a comedy; I've never seen one quite like this. The whole cast is great. Probably Christopher Walken's best cameo-type supporting role; some may argue that he steals the show. Even the soundtrack is funny. It definitely has the potential to be a cult favorite. It is very quotable, especially Walken's lines. It is mainly a plot driven type of comedy, but still connects you to the characters along the way. So, ignore all the hate and watch it for yourself before you blow it off as crap.If this was your cup of tea, I also recommend these other comedies: Gentlemen Broncos, Napoleon Dynamite, Clear History, The Big Lebowski, Election, What About Bob?, Extract, And Super(Rainn Wilson)

The central image of this movie is a dog taking a crap. Knowing this, I can't imagine how anyone could judge Envy by the same criteria as a "real" movie. This movie is stupid and it knows it's stupid. It's fully aware of that fact, so don't bother using that as a critique. Accept the stupidity into your heart and let this film melt your brain with comedy. In many mainstream comedies, audiences have to wade through some cheesy or worn out plot to get to the funny stuff. But at the end of the day the stories these movies are telling aren't really any good, they're merely a labored suggestion of substance. Ultimately the reason we watch them is to see some funny performers doing funny things, not for the narrative. However good a movie like the 40-Year-Old Virgin maybe, Bergman it ain't! The story only really functions to support the comedy. So then why not make a joke out of the plot too? Why not make a comedy that is one long extended joke? Just enjoy the insanity of the brilliant cast and be thankful that Envy has the common decency to forgo the usual pretense of profundity and focus on poop jokes instead. Now this next point may be a harder argument to make and may contradict my last point, but if you do look closely at the recurring gags and images in Envy, the dare-I-say motifs of the film, you might find that it is actually a very nasty spoof of our consumer culture. Plus, the main conflict of the film is that the characters have such a hard time reconciling their greed for material possessions and their moral obligations to other human beings. Jack Black's character even utters a line that I think many people actually live by: "Nice things make life better." So perhaps Envy is secretly brilliant and is merely hiding behind a mask of utter stupidity. That would make it the inverse of most movies out there today (I'm thinking of Inception right now).

envy is not as funny as i thought it would initially be, but after some of the reviews i read i found it to be much funnier than people was giving it props for, now true its not a gag a minute movie like zoolander or dodgeball, but ben stiller and jack black work well with each other and christopher walken is as great as ever, so the story is about jack black's character inventing a spray that makes dog pooh disappear, obviosly ben wants no part of it, but when the product makes jack black rich ben stiller starts to see the envy, its not great by all means and both ben stiller and jack black have funnier and better movies under their belt, but if your a fan of either i recommend this as its still a funny flick and i laughed my ass off quite a few times, as a big fan of ben stiller id have to say this is a lesser stiller but still great fun, give it a watch