Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller in "Zoolander."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a: Stars: Ben Stiller Director: Ben Stiller Rated: PG-13, with innuendo Length: 90 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(September 28, 2001) -- Ben Stiller's Zoolander goes for heavy-handed laughs as it sends up the fashion industry. The result is like using a steam roller to press a pair of pants.

Still, the laughs are there -- intermittently -- despite the film's two major flaws:

First, the best laughs were in the two-minute trailer -- an efficient way to enjoy this over-extended, 90-minute feature.

Second, the film's silly, unsophisticated approach wears thin, particularly because vapid male models and the fashion world are easy targets.

Stiller is Derek Zoolander, a dimwitted model whose sole accomplishment in life is looking good and having a pouty "look" called Blue Steel. It's been enough to take him to the top of the fashion world.

But an upstart hunk named Hansel (Owen Wilson) threatens his superiority, so Derek vows to change his life. "I'm pretty sure there's more to life than just being really, really good-looking, and I plan on finding out what that is," he says.

His resolve lasts about as long as one walk down the runway. Instead he takes another big modeling job, hoping to reclaim his throne. He's going to be the chief model for a new line of clothes called Derelicte, adapted from the attire of the homeless and created by the wildly flamboyant Mugatu (Will Ferrell).

Derek, however, is too dumb to notice that he's also becoming a pawn in a fiendish plot. Mugatu and other designers plan to assassinate the prime minister of Malaysia, because he's moved against the slave wages earned by clothing workers in his homeland.

They've chosen Derek as the assassin, and have brainwashed and trained him without his knowledge (in the tradition of The Manchurian Candidate).

As you'd expect, it's all just a slapdash excuse to send up the superficial fashion world; but the satire is spread so thin, the laughs soon fade and the yawning commences.

It's hard to maintain interest with cardboard-cutout characters who keep making the same superficial points. Zoolander has just enough substance to fill a skit on Saturday Night Live.

Stiller gets laughs with his curiously unidentifiable accent and oddball runway walk, but is stuck in a one-note performance. Wilson has better luck as the more versatile Hansel. Ferrell, meanwhile, is so over the top, he probably hasn't yet come back to Earth.

As a director, Stiller does the best that could be expected with the shallow material he co-wrote. At least it looks good and is adequately paced. He also understands the value of nepotism -- casting his father, veteran comedy actor Jerry Stiller, as his manager; his wife, Christine Taylor, in the film's only "normal" role as a magazine reporter; and his mother, comedian Anne Meara, as a protester outside a fashion show.