VaPOOrize this movie!

I remember sitting in a movie theater in 2002. A preview came on the screen for a movie “coming soon” and I knew I had to see the movie. It was Envy with Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Christopher Walken and it looked hilarious. It was about two middle class friends. One gets a ridiculous idea to create a product that makes poo disappear (VaPOOrize). It works. So while Jack Black is living in a mansion and driving a Lamborghini, Ben Stiller still lives in his same old house. He becomes envious and that’s when the hijinx start.

Only 6 months until it would be coming out. Soon afterwards I started working for Metropolitan Provisions, which supplied a majority of the movie theatres with their concessions. I would receive lists showing when new movies were being released and I watched for Envy. One day the movie was missing from the newest list. What happened? Did I miss it. Wait… It was pushed back. Why did the release get pushed back? I guess I was just going to have to wait. Finally in April of 2004, it was in the theaters. I tried to drag Vanessa to see it, but I was unsuccessful. In September it came out on video. Every time I would pick it up at the video store, there was something else we both wanted to watch, so I waited.

Tonight, thanks to Netflix, after years of build-up… I finally sat down to watch my movie. It sucked. It was such a good premise and such a good cast. What happened? Even the obvious plot lines would have been better than what they did with this movie. It’s a sad, sad night. If I would have looked at www.imdb.com I would have seen the following information and maybe my hopes wouldn’t have been quite as high:

The movie having been shot almost two years before it was released in
theaters was in danger of being released straight to video due to poor audience
response during test screenings. It was only due to The School of Rock
(2003)'s huge success that it finally got a theatrical release.