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FA-FA-FA-FA-FASHION By Greg Walton Review Film Critic Click the pic for the official site! Despite the brutal mocking committed upon the masculine half of the modeling profession in Ben Stiller's new film, "Zoolander," I'll bet there's not a lot of hurt feelings out there. While the rest of us point and laugh at their bulging underwear billboards and just-woke-up haircuts, your average male model is perfectly content to be overpaid, overindulged, and living la vida loca with an entourage of good-looking friends...and one ugly one to make them look even more beautiful by comparison. Right up until they turn30 and become washed up gas station attendants with perfect bone structure. Picking on such an easy target lowers the limbo stick for writer/director Stiller. I mean, if you can't make these guys look ridiculous, what's left, carnival workers? So there's some disappointment that all of the film's jokes aren't as successful as its set-up. Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller), the world's top male fashion figure, is brainwashed by nefarious clothes designer, Mugatu (SNL's one true star Will Ferrell) to assassinate a foreign dignitary who is threatening to drive up clothing production costs worldwide. As the film explains, it's only one of several assassinations throughout history committed by male models when the industry's financial success was threatened. Lincoln, Kennedy....yes the conspiracy runs deep, my friends. And the film's flashbacks to these historic wackings, as narrated by guest
star David Duchovny, are loopy fun. So is Hansel ("Shanghai Noon's" Owen
Wilson), a vacuous modeling archrival who teams up with Derek to save the
world from the fashion industry's reign of terror.
There's a lot of 007, and even more Austin Powers, in the film's scattershot approach. "Zoolander" seems composed of several skits rather than one cohesive movie, a problem that frequently crops up with characters who weren't meant to last more than 5-minutes at a stretch (hey, "It's Pat," everybody!). So Stiller hangs his hat on Derek's fish-out-of-water stupidity, creating a character that has no social function outside of a photo shoot or cosmetic commercial. When a group of Derek's male model friends are killed in a tragic gasoline fight set to WHAM's "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go - that's funny! When he heads out into the real world in search of his family roots, and winds up with Jon Voight in a New Jersey coal mine - that's funny! When he mispronounces the word "eulogy" as "u-google-ly" for the second or third time - that's just plain "Three's Company" bad. Lucky for Stiller, his celebrity friends are out in full force: Winona Ryder, Billy Zane, even David Bowie pops up as the judge of a fashion "walk-off" - a sort of all-out, mano 'y mano throwdown, male model style. Even though his work as an actor has been almost the opposite, Stiller's humor as a director has always been unapologetically heartless, especially on his short-lived MTV show, leaving out the moral coda most comedians feel obliged to tack on. But after the critical backlash from his last film, the infamous "Cable Guy," "Zoolander" is straight-up feel good wackiness. And Derek, as a character, is obviously meant to inspire the same sort of catchphrase craziness that Mike Myers lucked into. I found myself waiting for one particular character to steal the show, Dr. Evil-style. But Stiller shares the comedy with his co-stars; spreading the humor a little thin and never letting anyone step forward to deliver the big punchline. Rest assured "Zoolander" will make you laugh...and laugh often. But so will watching the E! Network for any length of time. GRADE: B
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