One of the joys of picking up the recent Bela Lugosi collection is getting to see delightful movies like The Invisible Ray. Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi team up in a movie that delves into meteorites and radiation and while the science is all perfectly absurd (especially the camera technique Karloff, as Janos Rukh, uses to determine the site of a certain meteorite) and downright laughable, I didn't care in the lease because the movie is thoroughly enjoyable. The effects are done well for the time, the acting is great, and the finish is particularly strong. It reminds me of the pulp sci-fi comics and novels of the 1940s and '50s, complete with ray guns and ridiculous science. You must watch this movie!

It seems that the people behind Envy realised that recent comedies - especially ones involving Ben Stiller and to a lesser degree Jack Black - have been situation spoofs, which have steadily declined in originality and generally laughs. I found the sheer absurdity of Zoolander utterly hilarious when it was released, Starsky and Hutch was also enjoyable, and then Dodgeball kept the laughs going for a lot of people, although personally i was a bit tired of the over-the-top characters - especially when the scenario wasn't quite so funny (perhaps the comedy of a Dodgeball tournament doesn't quite translate to Australia, where it's rarely played). So in an attempt to do something a little more original, Envy moves away from an absurd scenario and instead revolves around the absurd creation of Jack Black's character (i won't spoil what it is for those who intend to see the movie). The problem is that the movie seems to drag, i'm not a big enough movie buff to be able to think of examples, but it seems like this set up has been done a thousand times before - and very rarely successfully. So instead of a nice, crisp, enjoyable and fresh comedy, you get a film that seems to just go through the motions. Sure the motions can be quite amusing, and they're centred on an idea that is quirky enough to provide a few laughs - especially with Jack Black playing the excited and amusing, though a bit 2D, creator. Ben Stiller on the other hand seems a bit lost, he's asked to play a fuller role than the ridiculous characters of his Zoolander breed of movies, but he struggles as a family man, whether his fault or the scripts, there isn't enough depth to the character and the result is a movie of Ben Stiller doing those typical mannerisms and generally becoming tedious. The performance doesn't leave an imprint on the viewer (he's just Ben Stiller, Jack Black manages to actually portray a character - though not a challenging one). The last annoying element of the movie is Christopher Walken's role as 'The J Man', which is about as typical and two dimensional as characters come, and naturally he becomes monotonous and frustrating very quickly.
It's really not as unbearable as some people would have you think, it's watchable, especially if you're in the right mood (feeling silly would be a good prerequisite for seeing this film). Hire it on a movie night with friends and watch it after you've watched a scary film and feel like something light - hopefully you'll also be somewhat tipsy by then too. In that scenario i can imagine it would be quite enjoyable, but generally it provides too few laughs to carry itself and most of the time just drags along.