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ZOOLANDER Send This Review to a Friend
Ben Stiller's crazy new comedy is funny enough in places to generate belly-laughs, although when it gets overly wound up in plot it bounces off the wall with more noise than fun. But its satire of male fashion models and the greedy exploitation by clothing manufacturers of workers in Asia has its madcap moments. Stiller, the director and co-writer with Drake Sather and John Hamburg, is also the star as the lame-brained, vacuous model Derek Zoolander, who has achieved fame for various super-cool stares into the camera. If you want a fix on his ability to mangle speech, merely listen to him pronounce "eulogy."
The plot involves just that--a plot. The prime minister of Malaysia, due to visit a fashion show inspired by poverty and called "Derelicte," is targeted for assassination because he plans to raise wages and put an end to child labor. Bizarre fashion mogul Mugatu (Will Ferrell), with the connivance of Derek's agent, Maury Ballstein (Jerry Stiller), arranges to program Derek, in a satirical nod to "The Manchurian Candidate," to kill the prime minister. The climax in which the plot must be foiled is a rip-roaring mess.
But there are some delightful bits along the way, including a return by Derek to his roots, a coal mining town in southern New Jersey, if you please, where Derek's dad (Jon Voight) and brothers are embarrassed when they see Derek on TV as a mermaid. "Mer-man," he corrects them. Derek goes down to work in the pits and is a riot trying to mine coal. "I think I have black lung," he says, coughing. His father reminds him, "You've only worked a day."
Derek's competitive model Hansel (Owen Wilson), who cops the model of the year award even though Derek goes up to claim it, is almost as dim, but eventually the two become buddies. (At least Hardy was smarter than Laurel.) In one funny scene in which they get high they loosen up the libido of Matilda (Christine Taylor), a Time Magazine reporter who gets involved in trying to prevent the assassination. The film is replete with sight gags and gross dialogue, the funniest lines of which belong to Jerry Stiller (Ben's father, as surely everyone knows by now), who adds a welcome dose of comic shtick. We also get glimpses of an array of celebrities enlisted to show up on camera.
"Zoolander" is no comic wonder, but Ben Stiller himself is extremely funny most of the way, and there are enough amusing ideas celebrating dumbness, such as Hansel's notion that to get at files inside a computer you have to break it open, to appeal to connoisseurs of low comedy, very low. A Paramount Pictures release.
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