New Comedies Are Hit & Miss
Avoid Envy, Go See Mean Girls

Two new comedies made their theatrical debu
ts this week and stand as lessons on how to and how not to make a good movie. It will be interesting to see which of the two will be more successful in the long run.

Envy stars two of the busiest comedic actors of our time, Ben Stiller and Jack Black, and one of the better directors that America has seen in the past quarter century in Barry Levinson (Diner, Avalon, Rain Man, The Natural). Unfortunately the talents of these three men are entirely wasted on this pathetic poo-driven concept comedy.

Envy’s plot is about two best friends, Tim (Stiller) and Nick (Black), whose friendship is strained when Nick’s get-rich-quick scheme results in the invention of Vapoorize, a spray that makes dog poop, or any similar matter, disappear. Unfortunately, audience members are not given a can of Vapoorize when they enter the theatre. The laughs are few and far between, obvious and, of course, scatological in nature.

Envy suffers from the same script-as-an-afterthought thinking that plagues many of Jim Carrey’s recent outings. Producers seem to think they can just plop funny guys like Black and Stiller into any movie and be guaranteed a boffo laugh riot. Wrong. School of Rock was funny because the characters and plot were well developed and subsequently gave Black the opportunity to shine. And Stiller, well, he’s definitely a comedic talent but he should seriously consider taking some time off. He seems to have a contract with Hollywood that necessitates his presence in at least every other comedy produced. This might be a case where less is definitely more. That being said, his role as a jerk in the upcoming summer release Dodgeball looks promising.

Envy is rated PG-13 for language and sexual/crude humor and is currently playing at the Regal Cinema in Boone.

Mean Girls

Saturday Night Live head writer and Weekend Update Anchor Woman Tina Fey has almost single-handedly breathed new life into that weekly television institution. Now she has turned her attention to the big screen as the screenwriter for the new comedy Mean Girls. The movie is based on Rosalind Wiseman’s book Queen Bees and Wannabees: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and other Realities of Adolescence and stars Lindsay Lohan. Lohan plays Cady, the new girl at a New Jersey high school where she must learn how to make friends without earning the wrath of the popular girls.

Some have called Mean Girls an inferior version of the movie Heathers. This is (in teenspeak) like, so unfair! Heathers basked in a Goth style of dark humor that got a lot of its steam from pushing the boundaries of reality. Mean Girls gets its spunk by being totally true to its subject. High school is a dungeon filled with so many torture devices that little exaggeration is necessary to make it a platform for horror and humor.

Although many of the gags in Mean Girls are predictable, they are buoyed by being based in the reality of modern high school life and carried out by Lohan, Fey, Tim Meadows and other actors who display a knack for comic timing decidedly lacking in Envy.

Lohan is a young actress (not yet 18) with a world of potential. She has conquered comedy with great turns in Ð8:Freaky Friday and Mean Girls and showed she has the guts to perform on life television when she served as Saturday Night Live’s guest host last weekend.

Mean Girls is rated PG-13 for language, sexual content and some teen partying and is currently playing at Carmike Cinemas in Lenoir.