What do you get when you pair two loved ones comic actors with the director of the Rain Man Academy Award? Obviously one of the worst apostles in the early 2000s. Dark comedy "Envy" debuted in 2004 and proved to be a critical and commercial disaster, despite the cast and allegedly capable director at the helm (although we also talk about the director who oversaw. muted mobile drama "Alto Knights").

Directed by Barry Levinson, "Endures" starred Ben Stiller and Jackack Black as best friends Tim Dingman and Nick Vandarpark. After Nick invented a spray he claims to evaporate dogs, Tim refuses to invest and support his palm, but soon regrets his decision when Nick becomes incredibly rich in the back of his Harrebrain scheme. The tension between the two reaches fever, and that is when no one other than Christopher Walken appears in the role of J-Man, a draft that gives Tim a cute ear. Unfortunately, J-Man turns out to be less well-intentioned than it initially looks.

Stiller partially relied on the connection he built with "envy" waist With Walken tells Vanity fair"Because (Stiller) was a young boy. I was friends with his father and mother. The two worst films of Christopher Wucken on rotten tomatoes. But maybe he enjoyed it more than others did. It would not be a comic book to imagine, given how bad the reviews were. And, he probably didn't help the film open the same day as the now-now-bank "Medium Girls".

Whatever it was that caused "envy" to appear, it was certainly not the cast. In addition to Jackack Black, Ben Stiller and Christopher Walken, the film also starred Rachel Weiss as Tim's wife, Debbie Dingman and Amy Poller as Nick's wife, Natalie Vanderpark. For Pohler, the film's debut was doubled as it appeared in another comedy that would be much better than Buddy Buddy's bad exit at Berry Levinson.

"Envy" debuted on April 30, 2004, the same weekend as "Medium Girls", the current classic teenage comedy that became nothing less than the phenomenon of pop culture. "Medium Girls" not only made Fetch happen to the box officeWinning praise for the script and performances in the process, it has become a sensation that remains as a beloved, relevant and quoted today as it was 20 years ago. Ironically, "envy" simply had to see this whole game from the sidelines. Since they "mean the girls" did $ 104.5 million On a $ 36m budget, Levinson's comedy made a fair $ 14.5 million on a $ 20 million budget.

It did not help critics absolutely save the film. Anthony Breznian from the Associated Press wrote "" Endure "crawls to the end of a minefield of weak taste and comical wrong fires", while Sarah Gebard at the Washington Post claimed the movie "Rekes enough to want to have a evaporator that will make it magical". With these types of estimates, the miracle is the film even succeeded its 8% Rotten tomatoes score. But was the "envy" really bad as critics say, or the girls from the North Beach High School had a relationship with his failure?

Appears on the episode of "Good hanging with Amy Poller" Jackack Black (who named much more beloved comedy as his best movie) was honest about his comedy in 2004, saying, "Let's be honest." Pohler (who recently talked about her audition "Saturday Night Live" is unlike any other) He noticed how the film opened the same day as "Medium Girls", adding: "I remember I'm like," I'm in two films "(...) and I remember thinking:" This will be great, yes, two films the same day. And then one didn't ... survived. "

"Survive" implies "envy" was excavated by its competition. But could the film really face better with not faced against Lindsay Lohan and plastic? Maybe, but given the actual outline of the abject, it seems unlikely. Instead, "envy" arrived at a time when the films in Comedy were supposed to undergo a dramatic shift. The film made its debut just a year before the "40-year-old virgin" of the Dud Apatow and three years before a two-two-stroke "Superbad" and "knocked out", all three of which helped start a new time on the Chinese comedy that would come to define the genre for a good decade. Even just months after the announcement of "Envy", there were signs of a variable tide, with Adam McKay's arrival arriving in July 2004 and signaling the beginning of the new comic era that was raised from the ashes of any epoch "envy" helped.

As Roger Ebert wrote in his two -star overview of Barry Levinson's comedy, the movie "It's Funny, Yes, But Not Really Funny". With such titans of the genre waiting in the wings, being a kind of funny was simply not enough for "envy" to get any traction. That, he said, Richard Roper called the movie "One of the worst comedies I've ever seen", once again made the case of "envy" to completely descend on his merits or lack.