Movie Scene
Ben Stiller spoofs fashion industry in 'Zoolander'

By Marshall Fine
The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News

ZOOLANDER (Rated PG-13, with innuendo) Two and One-Half Stars (Fair-to-Good) A stellar male model questions the meaning of his life when he is displaced as Male Model of the Year by a younger model. A clever spoof of models and the fashion industry but not nearly clever enough. Starring Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Christine Taylor. Directed by Ben Stiller. Paramount Pictures, 90 mins.

But it seldom does.

While this Ben Stiller film is a clever spoof of models and the fashion industry, it is not nearly clever enough, given the pretensions of the subject matter.

Based on a brief spoof created for the 1996 VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards, "Zoolander" focuses on Derek Zoolander (played by Stiller), the world's most famous and highly paid male model.

Things in Zoolander's life go horribly awry, however, the night he is supposed to collect his fourth straight Male Model of the Year award. Instead, Hansel (Owen Wilson) wins. He's an extreme-sports type whose all-American look trumps Zoolander's Eurotrash hauteur.

Crushed, Zoolander decides that the unexamined life isn't worth living: "I'm pretty sure there's more to life than just being really, really good-looking," he announces to his agent, the crass Maury Ballstein (Jerry Stiller). His first impulse: to start the Derek Zoolander Institute for Children Who Don't Read Good.

His next: to get back to his roots. This entails a trip to the coal country of New Jersey, from which he escaped. But his aggressively salt-of-the-earth father (Jon Voight, seemingly made up to look like Christopher Walken) wants nothing to do with his self-centered son.

Instead, Zoolander is recruited by the one designer who has never hired him, the eccentric Mugatu (Will Ferrell), who has an ulterior motive. It has to do with slave labor in Malaysia and assassinating a new political leader who threatens to put a damper on the sweatshops exploited by the American fashion industry overseas.

There are dollops of a lot of movies here, including "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Clockwork Orange," as well as spoofs of every attitude-laden TV commercial that ever made you say, "What was that supposed to be selling?"There are plenty of laughs in the first half-hour, to be sure. But Stiller seems overly concerned with the larger story, at the expense of the jokes.

Still, he's a terrific comic actor, who milks every moment of being dimwitted — adopting the perfect glaze of self-satisfied stupidity. Wilson, as the swinging Hansel, just may be the freshest comic talent in movies today. Both Ferrell and Jerry Stiller (Ben's dad) are stellar comic performers but neither is given nearly enough truly funny lines.

"Zoolander" has witty things to say about the fashion industry which, for a lot of people, amounts to the real-life version of "The Emperor's New Clothes." But this film, which started as a skit, doesn't have the vision to expand beyond its beginnings.

Rated PG-13, with innuendo.

On the web:
• www.zoolander.com

Marshall Fine writes about movies and entertainment for The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News and Gannett News Service.