Envy

Year: 2004 Rating: PG-13 Overall Evaluation: 6.0 Significance Suppositions Story Style 8.0 / 10 7.0 / 10 3.0 / 10 6.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

Rated PG-13 for language and sexual/crude humor that is far more crude than it is humor. Typical lame slapstick kind of stuff. No nudity or gratuitous violence.

Story

This story showed a lot of promise. It's about two friends, one a dreamer with his head in the clouds and the other a basic white collar guy who thinks the key to life is hard work and focus. The dreamer invents an aerosol that dissolves poop and makes a jillion dollars or so. The catch is, the other friend had a chance to get involved in this scheme but thought it would never work. Now, the jillionaire is making him nuts simply by being rich while he still has to go work hard and focus. He tries to undermine him and gets into all kinds of trouble. Not a bad premise. The problem is the story basically sucks beyond that. Booooooring. Not over-the-top enough to be absurd and not intelligent enough for any lasting value.

Suppositions

The suppositions are a bit stretchy - the rich friend is just too nice and the Va-Poo-Rizor is ridiculous but that's OK, it's a comedy.

Significance

The only redeeming value of this film is that it really hammers home what true friendship is - and this is great. The jillionaire never becomes greedy or snotty. He remains a friend and is oblivious to his friends attitude because he has such a great heart. There is a good repentance / forgiveness / redemption scene that also illustrates real brotherly, undeserved love. This saved the movie from being a total flop, but unfortunately it will not make the film popular enough to make a big difference. Too bad.