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Tim (Ben
Stiller) and his best friend Nick (Jack Black) shared and shared
alike until Tim turned down a chance to invest in Nick's latest
crazy invention. Now Nick is raking in the millions while his buddy
is green with envy. Enter a cagey and conniving vagabond
(Christopher Walken), who's got a plan to turn the tables and steer
a little profit to himself. See what happens when ENVY turns this
comedy into a marathon of laughs everyone will enjoy! (from Envy
official website)
Ben
Stiller (Tim Dingman)
Jack Black (Nick Vanderpark)
Rachel Weisz (Debbie Dingman)
Amy Poehler (Natalie Vanderpark)
Christopher Walken (J-Man)
Directed
by Barry Levinson
Visit
Dreamworks official website for
Envy.
View the
Envy theatrical trailer,
courtesy Dreamworks LLC.
View the
Envy Video/DVD release
trailer, courtesy Dreamworks/Columbia.
View an
interview with Christopher
Walken, who discusses his Envy character "J-Man."
Content includes excerpts of various reviews of
Envy
(released 4/30/04), once again proving the axiom that Chris
will usually be the best thing in a bad movie.
Excerpt from
Hartford Advocate, May 6, 2004
(John Boonstra):
"Curious to note that this is the second
Ben Stiller comedy in a row which involves a central plot twist
involving the accidental death of a white horse. Even more curious,
Jack Black is used far too sparingly, and Stiller's Tim is so
incapacitated by his envy that
the burden
of being funny is left almost exclusively to Walken. This is good,
because no one is funnier than Walken crooning "Fal de RE, fal de
RA" at the top of his lungs, then cackling maniacally and abruptly
shutting down with the exclamation "...Etcetera!" But it's not as
good as it might get because, alas, Walken's still merely a
supporting character. Nonetheless, any film that finds room
for several gags revolving around flan can't be all bad, can it?"
Excerpt from
Globe and Mail, April 30, 2004
(Rick Groen):
"Walken Away With
Glory Must Make Rest of Cast Envious...
My guess is that Envy is both doomed
and destined to become a cult film -- you know, the kind of picture
that most hate but a few adore. If so, the cult will definitely not
be devoted to the two guys -- Jack Black and Ben Stiller -- whose
 mugs
are plastered on the posters.
There's only one good reason
to see this thing, and
it's got nothing to do with that pair. Who then? Who else but the
high priest of camp, the bishop of fifth business,
the pope of the absurd -- bow low to Christopher Walken...But
I've postponed the best long enough. Yes, the weird and wonderful
Walken. Who does he play? Some long-haired drifter, but it doesn't
really matter. What does he say? This, as a consolation to the
woebegone: "Life's unfair -- it's a raw-deal planet." Or this, as an
encouragement to talk: "C'mon, just let it tumble out, like circus
freaks, man." But that hardly matters either.
It's not what he says
that's funny, but the way he says it. Like his delivery of a simple
line, "Good for you," not once but three times in rapid succession
-- each with a different intonation, a changed rhythm, a separate
look. His 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."
Visalia-Times Delta (Just a 'New
Releases' listing, but good nonetheless!)
"One star 1/2
Envy
(Rated PG-13) (Profanity, innuendo) Barry Levinson's silly,
overcooked comedy about a friendship that's fried when one of the
two men strikes gold with a wacky invention. Ben Stiller and Jack
Black star,
but
Christopher Walken steals the picture in support. 99
minutes. (Jack Garner/GNS)"
Excerpt from
Baltimore Sun.com, April 30, 2004
(Michael Sragow):
"Director Levinson and his screenwriter,
Steve Adams, conjure a fractured-fairy-tale tone. They encourage the
actors to magnify the smallest glints of avarice, affection and
subterfuge without getting overblown. That goes not just for Black
and Stiller but also for Amy Poehler and Rachel Weisz as their
respective wives
and,
gloriously, Christopher Walken as an enigmatic drifter called the
J-Man. All collaborate on lowdown yet airy flights of
farce...Walken, indeed, is
an enigmatic drifter out of a Western, and whenever the action
flags, he provides the perfect charge. He's the loose cannon
in Levinson's arsenal, but he isn't the villain; he just wants to
get people's genuine feelings out, even if they're bad. He's like a
fringe-suburban bohemian: he says he always stayed away from large
sums of money and remained 'an independent contractor.'
It's a perfect role for
Walken the eccentric comic genius, who, from his unexpected
intonations ('good for you') to his seethingly ambiguous
expressions, retains an unassailable integrity. In an unmistakable
Walken improv, he says he got the idea for how to excavate a deeply
buried horse from 'those big things on Easter Island.' Such
inexplicably correct strokes make Walken the towering Tiki god of
absurd movie comedy."
Excerpt from
The London Free Press, April 30,
2004 (Liz Braun):
"Envy
has two or three laughs in it and they all involve Walken. He
and Rachel Weisz, who plays Stiller's wife, are actually in the
movie, while everyone else appears to be in a parallel universe
sitcom. It's weird...But here's the thing about Envy: A guy comes up
with an essentially unnecessary and worthless product; everybody
buys it anyway; the guy gets rich; dog poo is involved. Could the
film be a metaphor for Hollywood?"
Excerpt from the
Chicago Sun-Times, April 30, 2004
(Roger Ebert):
"Because Stiller and Black
are in the movie, it contains laughs,
and
because Christopher Walken is in the movie, it contains more laughs.
Walken is becoming Hollywood's version of a relief pitcher who comes
on in the seventh and saves the game. He hasn't had a lead in over
10 years, but maybe that's because he's so welcome in supporting
roles. You can sense the audience smiling when he appears onscreen.
Here he plays a stumblebum who calls
himself J-Man, perhaps in homage to that immortal movie character
Z-Man, perhaps not. After Dingman's life melts down, he turns to a
saloon for consolation, and finds J-Man standing at the bar ready to
provide advice and inspiration.
J-Man's
dialogue is Walkenized; he says strange things in strange oracular
ways. So the movie is funny, yes, but not really funny
enough. The screenplay, by Steve Adams, reportedly with uncredited
input by Larry David, is best at showing a friendship being
destroyed by envy, but weak at exploiting the comic potential of the
invention itself."
Excerpt from
The Boston Herald, April 30, 2004
(James Verniere):
"If little else, Envy, which was
directed by Barry Levinson...establishes several things...Ben
Stiller...is making far too many
movies without paying enough
attention to their quality...Jack Black...is not a comic genius and
has an uncanny ability to be suddenly insufferable. Levinson
 seems
to have lost it, but
Christopher Walken, who appears in the film as a longhaired drunk
who tries to blackmail Tim, is worth his weight in comic gold...Reportedly,
Stiller, who also can be seen in Starsky & Hutch, tried to have
this movie whacked. Although the film won't do anything for its
'hot' co-stars, Envy is far from the worst movie I have seen, and
Walken is
inspired...Here is an actor who has that rare ability to be good in
bad movies. Walken gives this limp comedy an instant Viagra-like
lift. J-Man befriends a drunken Tim at a bar because he wants
to hear his story. The character isn't funny because he
spews
one-liners or gets his naughty bits caught in a zipper...J-Man is
funny from the inside out. He has a funny way of talking and looking
at life and an especially funny way of singing along to the polka
standard 'Happy Wanderer' ('Valderee, valderah-ha-ha-ha-ha'). In an
attempt to coax something out of Tim, J-Man advises him to 'just let
it tumble out like circus freaks.'
Why can't
the movie be about him instead of these two losers?...In
contrast to Walken's acting, Levinson's direction is marked by long,
unfunny stretches. A Strangers on a Train reference is gratuitous.
Stiller,
who
must have been chagrined to see Walken steal this film from him and
Black, also can be seen in the upcoming films Meet the Fockers, a sequel to
Meet the Parents, and this summer's Dodge
Ball: A True Underdog Story. Let's hope he got the dog doo-doo out of his
system."
Excerpt from
The Boston Globe, April 30, 2004 (Ty
Burr):
"Good points? There's a pleasantly cynical bile to the movie's view
of middle-class hell: the Dingmans and the Vanderparks have
misshapen children and live under brown skies and an endless row of
electrical towers. I also liked Nick's butler (Hector Elias), who
praises Tim with genteel fulsomeness whenever he opens the door...And
then there's Christopher Walken as 'the J-Man,'
a mangy yet magisterial wino
who takes the ruined Tim under his wing and, under the guise of
helping him, ruins him further.
God love
this actor; he knows Envy is the multiplex equivalent of an
industrial spill, but he's there to pick up his check and damned if
he won't give us our money's worth. Walken gives each of his lines a
lubricious, happy spin; he has a monologue early on that makes not
one lick of sense, and you still soak it up in delight. Stiller
keeps giving him dark looks, as if wishing he were in the same movie
as this guy."
Excerpt from
Reuters, April 29, 2004 (Michael
Rechtshaffen):
"Taking in Envy, the new Barry Levinson comedy starring the
ubiquitous Ben Stiller and manic Jack Black (and
featuring a scene-stealing Christopher Walken) is sort of
like watching a TV talk show with a particularly strong guest
lineup. The banter is sufficiently witty and engaging for the
duration of the broadcast, but any lingering effects are permanently
banished with a casual flick of the remote control. Hanging at times
precariously by the thread of Steve Adams' seriously under-plotted
script, the low-key picture gets by on the genial charisma of its
cast, but it fails to rise to the occasion when it comes to building
to a necessary comic pitch...That may be why the Stiller-Black
matchup doesn't generate the anticipated comic sparks,
leaving
Walken to effectively walk away with the picture. As the off-kilter
and opportunistic J-Man, he manages to spin the most mundane of
lines into comic gold with the mere accentuation of a single
preposition."
Excerpt from
The Arizona Republic, April 29,
2004 (Bill Muller):
"After the setup, this movie - which also features a
country-and-Western score straight off the jukebox from hell -
plunges into an hour long tailspin, in which Tim meets a
philosophical bum (Christopher Walken) and accidentally shoots
Nick's horse with an arrow. The horse is - not hilariously - buried,
dug up, strapped to a van, and lost in a rainstorm. As he did in
Gigli,
Walken seems to be playing Christopher Walken, which doesn't present
much of a challenge for an actor of his caliber. His presence seems
like putting a gold hood ornament on a '72 Vega."
Excerpt from
Cinema Blend, May 3, 2005 (Joshua
Tyler):
 Chris
Walken is in the movie too and succeeds as he always does in
delivering a perfect performance that in some weird way draws humor
through parodying himself. Here he plays a disturbed old bum
who calls himself “The J-Man” and drives an outrageous monster
truck.
He’s always a sure thing and has been shining for decades in
thankless supporting roles like this, garnering memorable chuckles
in otherwise unmemorable films. When Stiller eventually has
his inevitable moment of angry-man meltdown,
it’s J-Man who steps in to
provide inspiration, hatching a plot which proves fruitless other
than as a welcome
catalyst to keep Walken on camera.
So Envy has some funny, but maybe not enough.
It’s best when
Stiller is exploding, or Black is flaunting, or
Walken is well, just
being himself.
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