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Zoolander Film review
ZOOLANDER
Running time: 89 mins
Starring: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Christine Taylor, Will Ferrell, Jerry Stiller, Milla Jovovich, Jerry Stiller, David Duchovny, Jon Voight
With the world's nerves frayed, the perfect antidote is a spot of dumb comedy. Cue Ben Stiller. With films like There's Something About Mary and Meet The Parents Stiller can generally be relied upon to provide some laughs without taxing the brain too severely. Zoolander, written, directed and starring Stiller, continues in the same vein, raising his already high level of stupidity as he ridicules the world of male modelling, a task that requires little help, but nevertheless is achieved to hilarious effect.
The film centres on Derek Zoolander (Stiller), the three time Male Model Of The Year, an official title he holds alongside the unofficial one of being possibly the dumbest person on the planet. The Zoolander character has been in Stiller's wardrobe for several years, first being unveiled as host of the VH1 Fashion Awards. Possessed of an indestructible ego, a Ziggy style hairdo and his trademark 'Blue Steel' pose, Zoolander is an icon. His face stares out from a million magazine covers, billboards and TV commercials, in which he utters absurd lines like "Moisture is the essence of wetness" as though he were quoting Plato.
Extending an idea for a sketch into a feature length film requires at least the semblance of a plot, which is where Zoolander wanders astray from idiocy and drifts perilously close to bad taste. The fashion industry is in jeopardy as the new Prime Minister of Malaysia is threatening to abandon child labour and raise wages. The industry's top designer, Mugatu (Will Ferrell), a poodle-clutching flamboyant megalomaniac, hatches a plan to have the Prime Minister assassinated for which he requires someone of sublime stupidity. No prizes for guessing who that might be.
I'm not sure such a deliberately ridiculous movie needed to burden itself with a moral judgement on child exploitation, but it was definitely tactless to include a story line about the assassination of a real head of state. Or perhaps they just thought as it was Malaysia no one would notice. That aside, Zoolander concerns itself little with anything other than being silly, something it achieves with ease, particularly when Owen Wilson shows up as the blonde surfer dude Hansel, chief rival for Zoolander's modelling crown.
When he fails to win his fourth Slashie (actor slash model), Derek questions whether there's "more to life than being really, really, really, ridiculously good looking", and goes in search of the answer, first by returning to his coal mining family where his tough father (Jon Voight) wants little to do with him. He is then lured by Mugatu and his sadistic sidekick Katinka (Milla Jovovich) with a scheme to create the 'Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good' while making a triumphant return to modelling with Mugatu's latest collection, the apocalyptic vagrant chic of 'Derelicte'.
For Stiller, the film represents an exercise in nepotism with his father Jerry Stiller playing the crude Maury Ballstein, Zoolander's agent and owner of Balls Models. His mother also turns up briefly as does his wife Christine Taylor, who plays the Time reporter Matilda Jeffries who's doing an expose piece on Mugatu. Along with his family, Stiller has also enlisted the assistance of many of his celebrity friends, including David Bowie, Winona Ryder, Donald Trump and Cuba Gooding Jr all of who play themselves as they provide heartfelt praise for their friend Derek Zoolander. That they would be lured in on such a joke is testimony to just how serious Stiller is about not being taken seriously, a fact born out by Zoolander which is seriously funny.
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