A film review by Craig J. Koban |
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ENVY
Tim Dingman: Ben Stiller / Nick Vanderpark: Jack Black / Debbie Dingman: Rachel Weisz / Natalie Vanderpark: Amy Poehler / J-Man: Christopher Walken Directed by Barry Levinson / Written by Steve Adams |
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Barry Levinson’s new comedy
ENVY
is a bold and miraculous achievement in bad and atrocious filmmaking.
It’s a piece of work that is stupendous in its awfulness and a film so
incompetent and so unfunny that that the terms “comedic dead zone” easily
comes to mind. The film is not just
lacking in life, it might as well just be completely inert.
It was a long and maddening endurance test, one in which you pray to the
movie gods to wake you up, because surly this 99 minutes of torture must be some
sort of terrible nightmare. No one
woke me up, and the nightmare was most definitely real.
Just what in the hell
happened here? How could a
comedy with the two funniest men in films today (Ben Stiller and Jack Black) and
an Oscar winning director (RAIN MAN’S Barry Levinson) sink so low into the abyss of sluggish and
perverse inanity? Leaving the
theatre I kind of felt like a few of my favourite sports athletes were caught
bribing the judges for a gold medal. ENVY
is a lot like that. It was
advertised as a great new black comedy that teams up two AK47’s of modern
comedians. And not only that, but if its directed by
an Oscar winner, it’s gotta be good? Someone
should walk up to Levinson and put a gun to him and force him to relinquish his
Best Director Oscar, because if he continues to make turds like this, having
that gold statue is like some sort of unholy severance pay.
ENVY
is easily the worst offence of Levinson’s already questionable career, and it
viciously robbed me of nearly two hours of my life that I will never, ever, ever
get back. It’s ironic that this film is
crap, because it’s actually about crap. Tim Dingman (Ben Stiller) and
his best friend, Nick Vanderpark (Jack Black), work at the same 3M plant making
sandpaper. Tim is a rigidly
focused young man, who gets a promotion over the rash, impulsive, and slacker
that is Nick. Nick, however, has
something that Tim does not have - he
is a man of vision, a man with a focused dream.
Nick is always thinking of new inventions. In a lightening bolt of creativity, Nick invents the idea
for, get this – VAPOORIZE – an aerosol spray that can
make…feces…disappear (get it…poo…Va-poo-rize…ho-ho!).
Tim is basically sick to death of
hearing about Nick’s wild ideas, and stubbornly refuses to invest fifty per
cent of the capital needed to get this invention of the ground.
However, Tim’s wife Debbie (Rachel Weiz) and Nick’s wife Natalie (SNL’s
Amy Peoler) give Nick the support he needs.
Something amazing then happens - Vapoorize
becomes an overnight success and turns Nick and his family into instant
millionaires. Tim, meanwhile, buries himself into depression and envy and
eventually loses his wife and job. Just
when he thought he could go no further down, a street vagrant named J-Man
(Christopher Walken!?) comes to his aid and with some weird, post-modernist Zen
advice, convinces Tim to give into to his envy.
Comedy, or laughs, dear reader, do
not ensue.
ENVY is a textbook graduate thesis on how
(a) to
completely have no idea on how to make an effective black comedy and (b) to
utterly misuse two inspired and hilarious screen comedians.
Black comedies exist and work as a genre when they both generate lots of
laughs and truly make you disturbed. There
is nothing inherently edgy, vile, or crude about the film (other than seeing dog
crap appear on the big screen countless times) and the film has no big laughs in
any way. How could a comedy with
Stiller and Black in it not have one single genuine laugh until the 45 minute
mark (that scene involves a drunk Stiller, a bow and arrow, and a
horse…’nuff said)? Instead, the
film just meanders and meanders aimlessly and expects the audience to be patient
for its laughs. Well I and the
other suckers in the audience waited and waited and waited and waited to
laugh. Funny, comedies should not
generate this type of response, and the theatre was so quiet you could hear a
pin drop…it was like being at a wake. Okay, wait a tick; there are three
laughs in the film. The first one I
already mentioned. The second was
Black’s somewhat inspired infomercial (but even here he feels subdued), and a
concluding moment with Christopher Walken.
Outside of that, there is nothing else that even remotely generates a
smile. If anything, the film is
absolutely trying too hard for laughs with no payoff whatsoever.
A concluding scene with Stiller and Black goes on for what seems an eternity,
with Stiller jabbering away and pathetically and desperately trying for big
laughs that don’t come (I felt embarrassed for Stiller, he was at his worst in
that scene). This film is a
watch-checker flick, because you check the time more than you actually watch the
screen in some sort of vain hope that the film will end and you can get on with
your life. C’mon, Barry, what else went wrong with this train wreck? Well, anyone who has seen Stiller and Black in action know that you must consistently play off their intense comic energy (Black, clearly). Black is given nothing to do in this picture but to parade around in lavish outfits and make the odd wisecrack. Stiller, who is easily capable of being the funniest man in films, is so shackled at playing this hopeless, annoying, and insensitive character that he does not generate any audience sympathy at all. He seems so reserved and calm throughout most of the film’s first hour that you want to grab him, give him a slap, and tell him to cut loose. But you really don’t care for the guy, because the film fails because it makes the target of Tim’s envy such a nice guy.
The reason that Stiller’s other roles work (ie: MEET
THE PARENTS)
is that Stiller is such a nice man in them that he tries so hard to be accepted
but fails miserably. In this film,
I just prayed that Black would shoot him with Vapoorize and make him and his
tired comic antics disappear. Consider:
If
Black played a jerk (he could do so well at that), then maybe our sympathies for
Stiller would increase twofold. All
of the other actors give such stilted and forced performances I felt like
throwing my popcorn at the screen. The
always lovely and witty Rachel Weiz overplays her character so badly that you
wonder if Levinson even gave her any direction. Stiller and Black can’t possibly
accept all the blame for this mess. Like
a failing team in hockey, the blunt of the blame usually is placed on the coach,
in this case Levinson. Does he know
what a heinous film he’s made here, one that is ripe with no laughs, no
discerning narrative, and characters that we don’t care for?
Levinson has made some great films in the past (RAIN
MAN
won for Best Picture at the 1989 Oscars, WAG THE DOG was one of the best films of
1997, BUGSY,
LIBERTY HEIGHTS, and SLEEPERS are his other fine works). Yet,
like Babe Ruth, for every home run he hits, he strikes out as well.
Consider the dreadful BANDITS,
the overwrought TOYS,
the bloated SPHERE,
other stinkers that should have been stopped before they were made.
It’s been years since we have seen a great effort from this director
that has seemingly lost his touch. Stiller
and Black will survive this debacle (Stiller already has made three other
hilarious films this year), but it is Levinson that will be hit the hardest.
ENVY
is not just bad, but shamefully bad, the type
of terrible film that you stare up at the screen in stupefied disbelief and
quietly ask yourself why and how. Why
was this film given a greenlight to be made and how is it that the film is so
lacking in laughs when it has obvious comedic talent involved?
I did stumble upon some internet sites that stated that the film was
made two years ago and that, after some disastrous test screenings, the film’s
studio – DreamWorks – put it on the shelf and there it stayed for the next two
years. It was only when Black’s SCHOOL
OF ROCK was successful that they decided to release ENVY
to the film viewing public, and advertise it as a great comedy with the stars of SCHOOL OF ROCK
and MEET THE
PARENTS.
ENVY should have stayed on the shelf, and I will not
forgive the suits at DreamWorks for releasing a film about crap that made me, in
turn, feel like crap. |
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