Envy (2004)

A man becomes increasingly jealous of his friend's newfound success.

Director:

Barry Levinson

Writer:

Steve Adams

Stars:

Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Rachel Weisz

3 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Ben Stiller	...	Tim Dingman
Jack Black	...	Nick Vanderpark
Rachel Weisz	...	Debbie Dingman
Amy Poehler	...	Natalie Vanderpark
Christopher Walken	...	J-Man
Ariel Gade	...	Lula Dingman
Sam Lerner	...	Michael Dingman
Lily Jackson	...	Nellie Vanderpark
Connor Matheus	...	Nathan Vanderpark
Hector Elias	...	Eduardo
Angee Hughes	...	Woman at Play
Manny Kleinmuntz	...	Dimitriov
Blue Deckert	...	Cal
John Gavigan	...	Les
Terry Bozeman	...	3M Worker

Storyline

Ben Stiller and Jack Black star as Tim and Nick, best friends, neighbors and co-workers, whose equal footing is suddenly tripped up when one of Nick's harebrained get-rich-quick schemes actually succeeds: Vapoorizer, a spray that literally makes dog poop, or any other kind for that matter, evaporate into thin air -- to where exactly is anyone's guess. Tim, who had scoffed at Nick's idea and passed on an opportunity to get in on the deal, can only watch as Nick's fortune -- and Tim's own envy -- grow to equally outrageous proportions. When the flames of jealousy are fanned by an oddball drifter (Walken) who imposes himself into the situation, Tim's life careens wildly out of control ... taking Nick's with it.

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Plot Keywords:

falling downhill | fired | dog | jealousy | neighbor | 

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Taglines:

Success didn't go to his head, it went to his neighbor.

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Genres:

Comedy

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for language and sexual/crude humor

Details

Official Sites:

Dreamworks Pictures.

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

30 April 2004 (USA)

Also Known As:

L'envie

Filming Locations:

Brazil

Box Office

Budget:

$40,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$6,160,886, 2 May 2004

Gross USA:

$12,181,484

Company Credits

Production Co:

DreamWorks, Columbia Pictures, Castle Rock Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

99 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Jack Black, Ben Stiller and DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg publicly apologized for the film during a press conference for Shark Tale (2004) at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

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Goofs

In the scene when J-Man is sitting in Tim's chair after Tim left the cabin, J-Man has crumbs on his shirt and pants. However, when the shot changes to show both J-Man and Tim, the crumbs disappear, then reappear when J-Man has his close-up again.

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Quotes

Mr. Parmenter: Now, your performance chart's pretty good until here. And then your focus nosedives into the red. You see? Now, is there anything that happened around *here*... you might like to talk about?
Tim Dingman: Um, no.
Mr. Parmenter: You sure?
Tim Dingman: Yeah. No.
Mr. Parmenter: Any reason?
Tim Dingman: Reason? No, I can't think of...
Mr. Parmenter: Any reason at all?
Tim Dingman: No. No reason. No. I mean, nothing I can think of. I mean... you know, other than every day, I get into my little shit-box car and there he is... with the wind in his hair... on his great big shiny horse. And I drive ...
[...]

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Crazy Credits

During the end credits, viewers see a TV infomercial for Dingman and Vanderpark's new invention, Pocket Flan.

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Connections

Referenced in Be Kind Rewind (2008)

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Soundtracks

I Can See Clearly Now
Written by Johnny Nash

User Reviews

Perhaps you had high expectations?

When I first heard about a movie with Ben Stiller and Jack Black, yeah, I got my hopes up. I love these guys. Then I'd heard it started getting terrible reviews and my hopes sank. I think this is a necessary step to enjoying the movie. Because whoever gives it a negative review is someone who was clearly expecting a different movie, and rather than enjoy what they got, they complained about what they didn't. The comedy is SUPER dead-pan. If you're expecting Ben Stiller out of 'Something about Mary' or Jack Black out of 'Tenacious D', stop. Jack Black, by Jack Black standards, is in a coma in this movie. While some people want to see him scream and yell and all that (which is great), I found it just as funny that he was being 3/4's serious.

Quite unexpectedly, Christopher Walken made this movie. His personality was spot-on. This movie quite reminded me of another movie, which I can't quite remember unfortunately, but in some ways it also reminded me of Office Space. The dry, normal guy humor. "What would you do if you had a million dollars?" "Two chicks at the same time." And in some ways it reminds me of another recent Ben Stiller movie, Starsky and Hutch. It took me awhile to get into Starsky, because I thought it was meant to be a parody. Once I realised it was "serious" I had a lot more fun with it. And I laughed as much as Starsky, if not more, in Envy.