Our Rating: 2.50
If it looks like a chicken and walks like a chicken, it’s probably a chicken; if it sits on a studio’s shelf for a year, it’s probably a turkey. Yet this mucho-delayed Barry Levinson comedy isn’t nearly as wretched as expected — just underthought. Taking its cue from the Morrissey credo “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful,” the movie tracks the resentment a corporate goody-goody (Ben Stiller) comes to feel toward his lifelong buddy (Jack Black), the nouveau riche inventor of an aerosol spray that disintegrates dog feces. The exaggerated glamour of the latter’s new lifestyle is among the 50 percent or so of “Envy’s” gags that live up to its premise, but the script doesn’t build the way it should, floundering around from one extraneous subplot to another and abandoning Black’s character for long stretches (a deficiency that, in this post-School of Rock world, has to have a lot of marketing execs kicking themselves). Yet there are still such nifty attributes as Christopher Walken’s supporting role as a nosy indigent, a portrayal that once again proves how unfailingly funny Walken is when spouting the most unlikely dialogue. It’s a strange equation: The less believable the character, the better he is. (Note to Ashton Kutcher: This will not work for you.)
This article appears in May 5-11, 2004.