Metro Pulse/Movie Guru/Zoolander

Movie Guru Rating:
Meditative (3 out of 5)

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Ben Stiller directs a fashion-shoot in the satiric Zoolander.

by Coury Turczyn

Soon after the lights dim and the projector glows, there is a searing pain deep inside one's skull, starting at the exact point where the eye's nerve endings transmit images to the brain. Then, in the few moments it takes the brain to process this visual information, a feeling of dread spreads throughout the body. Perhaps the psyche recognizes the images as a recurring nightmare, unstoppable, merciless. Finally, as apprehension ferments into stark horror, the nauseating truth is revealed: The Britney Spears Pepsi commercial is unreeling yet again...and there is no escape!

I curse the Pepsi executives who decided that this jailbait tart would be the perfect sales tool to inflict upon unsuspecting moviegoers. I curse Regal Cinemas for taking Pepsi's sugar-water money. I curse the director for propping Bob Dole's impotently-clutched pen in front of his crotch as the former U.S. senator feigns lust for a moppet 1/16th his age. And most of all, I curse the American public for allowing itself to be brainwashed into believing that Ms. Spears: A) can dance, B) can sing, C) is sexy. How long will this mass psychosis last? How many more movies will be ruined by this over-priced non-spectacle of craven marketing?

That said, Zoolander is pretty good, though not as entertaining as I'd hoped...which is a surprising disappointment after a summer chock full of predictable disappointments.

Ben Stiller is the comic voice of my generation—we post-Boomer/ pre-Slacker cynics raised on MAD Magazine and weaned on Late Night with David Letterman. Actually, he's the only comic voice of my generation since there are just 12 of us. Perhaps that's why I have a weakness for nearly everything he's done (yes, that includes Mystery Men). As a comedic actor in movies like Flirting With Disaster, There's Something About Mary and Meet the Parents, Stiller manages to convey a sympathetic jerkiness born out of exasperation with his fellow humans; no matter how hard he tries to like them, they invariably weird-out on him until he must wield his sarcasm in self-defense. The hook is that although his sarcastic jabs are very witty, they aren't always effective, rendering him a lovable loser.

As a dramatic actor in Permanent Midnight and Your Friends and Neighbors, Stiller reveals the darker side of that wit with portraits of desperation and cruelty. But it's as a master parodist that Ben Stiller is aces in my book. With his 1992 TV show on FOX and his mini-movies for MTV, he has lanced boils of celebrity pretension with unerring accuracy. Whether aping Bono's Jesus-rocker stance while hawking Lucky Charms or exposing the narcissism of talentless boy bands as a member of the "Backstreet Boyz," Stiller exposes the pop-culture clichés we buy into for what they are: empty hype, not art.

So you'd think with Zoolander—Stiller's first full-length parody movie, which he co-wrote and directed—we'd have a slice of dumb-comedy nirvana. Yet, although there are chuckles aplenty, the affair simply doesn't quite attain the blissful state of a sharp 10-minute skit. Nevertheless, it's a valiant effort to do absurdity right.

Stiller stars as preening, empty-headed Derek Zoolander, the world's greatest male fashion model. Cheeks perpetually sucked in and only able to walk as if striding along a runway, Derek exists purely for public adulation. But his applause is dimmed by the rise of Hansel (Owen Wilson), a Zen surfer nature boy who steals Derek's crown as the VH1 male model of the year. Career suddenly in decline, the crushed Derek is chosen by a shadowy cabal of fashion designers to become the dupe in a plot to assassinate the new prime minister of Malaysia, who plans to stop the use of child labor in his nation's clothes factories. Kidnapped by hissy fit-prone henchman Mugatu (Will Ferrell), Derek undergoes a Manchurian Candidate-style brainwashing, transforming him into a killing machine. Can the nefarious plan be foiled?

Zoolander's scenes are individually funny: Derek's ill-fated romp through New York with his male-model buddies to the tune of "Wake Me Up (Before You Go Go)," Derek's trip to coal-mine country to visit his small-town family and find himself, Hansel and Derek's "walk-off" showdown to determine who's king of the runway. The details are just right, too: Mugatu's logo-festooned outfits, Derek's trademark (yet identical) facial expressions "Le Tigre" and "Blue Steel," Hansel's penchant for extreme (-ly stupid) sports and tribal tattoos. The character-acting is also on target: Ferrell is truly bizarre as the prissily evil Mugatu, Wilson lacks a bit of his usual spontaneity but is ridiculously self-involved as Hansel, and Stiller is simply unafraid to make a complete fool of himself in the name of parody. And while the jokes don't always snap, Zoolander's satire of the fashion industry's reliance on cheap foreign labor is a wickedly funny statement (something rare in any Hollywood movie).

So what's missing? Well, even in a 90-minute comedy of the absurd, you need a main character who does something. He or she must take action against whatever or whoever they're fighting; even in such stupid-comedy classics as Airplane!, the Naked Gun series, Jim Carrey's many dumb efforts, or the Austin Powers series, the hero solves the problem at hand, however ineptly. In Zoolander, poor Derek is mostly just there for the ride until the final minutes. It's hard enough to get wrapped up in the tale of an oaf, let alone a passive one.

Still, Zoolander has more originality and genuine zaniness than a hundred Rat Races. In a time when any sort of respite from the anxiety in our minds and the pain in our hearts is much needed, Zoolander's colorful world of poodle-do'd villains and prancing heroes is a welcome escape.