Envy
DreamWorks Distribution | Release Date: April 30, 2004 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
31
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
2
Mixed:
12
Negative:
16
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
The movie works fairly well as a pitch-dark comedy, and very well as a dead-on satire of upward mobility and its discontents. Read full review
75
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Quirky and enjoyable. Read full review
60
Film ThreatRick Kisonak
It may not feature the funniest performances Stiller, Walken and Black have ever given but, these three guys giving performances just this funny is enough to make Envy a movie you'll end up kicking yourself for missing. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterMichael Rechtshaffen
The laughs tend to come in fits and starts, built around individual set pieces rather than being generated organically out of the storytelling. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Envy is in the unenviable position of saddling two of Hollywood's most talented comic actors with a script that doesn't do them justice. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
Envy is such an ugly emotion, perhaps it deserves an ugly movie. Barry Levinson's Envy fills the bill - a mean-spirited black comedy saturated with dog-poo jokes and only intermittent yowls of mirth. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Black somehow feels reigned in; shaved and barbered, he's lost his anarchic passion and is merely playing a comic role instead of transforming it into a personal mission. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
[Walken's] 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. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
One of those cinematic curiosities that almost always fade quickly, but that will usually find a devoted cult audience once it hits that peculiar Elysian Field known as the aftermarket. Read full review
40
L.A. WeeklyJohn Patterson
Even the relatively successful pairing of neckless maestro of anxiety Stiller with the indomitably effervescent Black gets bogged down by Steve Adams' aimless screenplay. Would the Barry Levinson who once made "Diner" please wake up and pull himself together? Read full review
40
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Levinson, who has directed enough films to know better, should recognize a stinker of a script when he smells one: Instead clever laughs he serves up sloppy schtick, dead spots filled with lame ad-libbing and Walken crooning "The Happy Wanderer." Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesKevin Crust
A woeful little comedy that runs out of steam shortly after its opening sequence. Read full review
40
VarietyRobert Koehler
Can't decide whether to be an eccentric black comedy or a middle-of-the-road diversion. Read full review
40
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Ultimately more amusing than hilarious, and sometimes less than that. Read full review
38
Chicago TribuneMark Caro
Envy is a shaggy dog-poop story that'll make you wish you could spray something at the screen to make it disappear. Read full review
38
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Envy makes a pretty entertaining three-minute trailer. If only they'd left it at that. Read full review
38
New York PostJonathan Foreman
There are a few chuckles here and there, and there are odd wisps of cleverness in the script by Steve Adams, but for the most part, Envy is a film that doesn't know where it's going. Read full review
30
Washington PostSara Gebhardt
With all the dog dung in Envy, it's almost too easy to generalize that it stinks. But it does, unfortunately, despite the big-name actors in its cast. Read full review
30
The New York TimesStephen Holden
Squandered in foolish horseplay and on a story that zigzags so far out of control that it feels as if the screenwriter, Steve Adams, pasted together a bunch of zany notions in a frantic search for confusion. Read full review
30
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
With so many dubious elements at play, even the half-good ideas get lost in the shuffle. Read full review
30
Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar
The most telling symptom of bad comedy is pretty easy to diagnose: no laughs. Read full review
25
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
It's remarkably appropriate that Envy is about turds, because that's what the movie is. Read full review
25
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Environmentalists are up in arms. "Where did the shit go?" they want to know. The answer is painfully obvious: into the screenplay. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
The film is neither fish nor fowl nor some arresting new entity, but a lumpish coagulation of conflicting impulses and unrealized gestures. Read full review
25
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Leaves you with the dismaying sensation that Levinson, who should probably be off making his own version of ''The Player,'' has instead crafted a comedy of self-loathing, burying himself in a movie that deserves to be Vapoorized. Read full review
20
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Envy feels like a comedy in search of a drama in search of some sort of lugubrious existential meaning; it never quite seems to know where it's going to head next, and neither will the audience. Read full review
20
EmpireJo Berry
You'd think it'd be hilarious. Think again. Read full review
16
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
Stiller and Black have the chemistry of fingernails-on-blackboard and the movie is disastrously unfunny. Read full review
12
Boston GlobeTy Burr
A weirdly airless disaster, a turkey so insistently DOA that the dialogue serves as its own epitaph. Read full review
10
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
In short, every element suggests Envy ought to be amusing, but the only comparably disastrous movie in recent memory involves Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, and a rapping retarded man. Read full review
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