A Major Jack Black And Ben Stiller Flop Opened On The Same Day As Mean Girls

What do you get when you pair two beloved comedic actors with the Academy Award-winning director of "Rain Man"? One of the worst flops of the early-2000s, apparently. Dark comedy "Envy" debuted in 2004 and proved to be a critical and commercial disaster, despite an all-star cast and an ostensibly capable filmmaker at the helm (though we are also talking about the director who oversaw muted mob drama "The Alto Knights").

Directed by Barry Levinson, "Envy" starred Ben Stiller and Jack Black as best friends Tim Dingman and Nick Vanderpark. After Nick invents a spray that he claims can vaporize dog poop, Tim declines to invest and support his pal, but he soon regrets his decision when Nick becomes incredibly rich of the back of his harebrained scheme. The tension between the two reaches a fever pitch, which is when none other than Christopher Walken shows up in the role of J-Man, a drifter who lends a sympathetic ear to Tim. Unfortunately, J-Man turns out to be less benevolent than he initially seems.

Stiller partly relied on the relationship he built with Walken on "Envy" to cast him in "Severance," with Walken telling Vanity Fair, "Since [Stiller] was a young boy. I was friends with his father and mother. I worked with him in a play when, I think, he was a teenager. And I made a rather good movie with him called 'Envy.'" The veteran star was almost certainly joking about the movie being rather good as it remains one of Christopher Walken's two worst movies on Rotten Tomatoes. But perhaps he enjoyed it more than others did. That wouldn't be a stretch to imagine, considering how bad the reviews were. And it probably didn't help that the movie opened on the same day as the now-beloved "Mean Girls."

Whatever it was that caused "Envy" to flop, it certainly wasn't the cast. Alongside Jack Black, Ben Stiller, and Christopher Walken, the film also starred Rachel Weisz as Tim's wife, Debbie Dingman, and Amy Poehler as Nick's wife Natalie Vanderpark. For Poehler, the film's debut was doubly special as she was simultaneously appearing in another comedy which would fare much better than Barry Levinson's ill-fated buddy outing.

"Envy" debuted April 30, 2004, the same weekend as "Mean Girls," the instant classic teen comedy that became nothing short of a pop culture phenomenon. "Mean Girls" not only made "Fetch" happen at the box office, winning praise for its script and performances in the process, it became a sensation that remains as beloved, relevant, and quotable today as it was 20 years ago. Ironically, "Envy" simply had to watch all this play out from the sidelines. Whereas "Mean Girls" made $104.5 million on a $36 million budget, Levinson's comedy made just $14.5 million on a $20 million budget.

It didn't help that critics absolutely savaged the movie, too. Anthony Breznican of the Associated Press wrote, "'Envy' crawls to its finish through a minefield of poor taste and comedic misfires," while the Washington Post's Sara Gebhardt claimed the film "reeks enough to wish there was a vaporizer that would make it magically disappear." With these sorts of appraisals, it's a wonder the film even managed its 8% Rotten Tomatoes score. But was "Envy" really as bad as the critics say, or did the girls of North Shore High School have something to do with its failure?

Appearing on an episode of "Good Hang with Amy Poehler" Jack Black (who named a much more beloved comedy as his best movie) was candid about his 2004 comedy dud, saying, "Let's be honest, though. 'Envy'? It kind of whiffed." Poehler (who recently spoke about her "Saturday Night Live" audition being unlike any other) noted how the movie opened on the same day as "Mean Girls," adding, "I remember being like, 'I'm in two movies,' [...] and I remember thinking, 'This is going to be great, yeah, two movies same day. And then one didn't really... survive."

"Survive" implies "Envy" was snuffed out by its competition. But could the film really have fared better had it not faced off against Lindsay Lohan and the plastics? Perhaps, but given the truly abject reviews, it seems unlikely. Instead, "Envy" arrived at a time when comedy movies were about to undergo a dramatic shift. The film debuted just one year before Judd Apatow's "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," and three years before the one-two-punch of "Superbad" and "Knocked Up," all three of which helped kick off a new age of cinematic comedy that would come to define the genre for a good decade. Even just a few months after "Envy" released, there were signs of the changing tide, with Adam McKay's seminal "Anchorman" arriving in July 2004 and signaling the beginning of a new comedic era that rose from the ashes of whatever epoch "Envy" helped bring to an ignoble close.

As Roger Ebert wrote in his two-star review of Barry Levinson's comedy, the movie "is funny, yes, but not really funny enough." With such titans of the genre waiting in the wings, being sort of funny just wasn't enough for "Envy" to gain any sort of traction. That said, Richard Roeper dubbed the film "one of the worst comedies I've ever seen," once again making the case for "Envy" flopping entirely on its own merits, or lack thereof.