Viking Night: Zoolander
By Bruce Hall
October 8, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Stiller and Wilson play Derek Zoolander and Hansel McDonald, allegedly the two hottest male models on the planet. I say "allegedly" because although both men are clearly in their physical prime here, neither is quite the reedy, baby-faced piece of veal you normally see in Calvin Klein ads. Still, they seem to put a lot of effort into the material and as successful film stars I'm sure it was nice to walk around in $6,000 socks just like it was any other day, and I salute them for this. The setup is that Hansel's career is on the way up nearly as fast as Derek's is starting to flame out. Little surprise then, when fate deals them both a not so subtle case of role reversal as Hansel upsets Derek for the coveted title of Male Model of the Year.
For Hansel, this is simply an affirmation of how obviously awesome he is. But for Zoolander it's the ultimate humiliation, and he decides to retire in a huff and go do...whatever it is models do when they retire. In real life I assume it involves continuing to be attractive, drinking champagne day and night and eating with extremely tiny cutlery. In this movie, it involves Zoolander making an attempt to return to his roots, not to mention the most jagged subplot in the story. His family members are all coal miners - a proud, ruddy looking bunch who are barely able to string words together, let alone walk entirely upright. They’re also distracting and unnecessary; I’m not sure a character as thin as Zoolander needs even this much backstory.
On the upside, you get to see Vince Vaughn for a minute, so that's nice.
This would be where the Derek Zoolander story ends, were it not for an underhanded fashion Mogul named Mugatu (Will Ferrell - a high point), who is involved in an unfortunate labor dispute with the government of Malaysia, which seems to be phasing out sweatshops. As an enthusiastic member of the shadowy political cabal that controls the modeling industry, Mugatu decides to use the old Manchurian Candidate routine on Zoolander as part of his evil plan to thwart the Malaysians and continue making high quality fashion clothing and accessories using the most precious gift of all - child labor. In case you haven't noticed by this point in the story, Derek is kind of an epic moron, and so are his friends. He's not going to solve the Da Vinci Code of the runway world on his own, and that's where the Love Interest comes in.
Real life wife Christine Taylor appears as Matilda Jeffries, who is just like every girl you know. She's an incredibly smart, incredibly beautiful, incredibly successful professional woman who's only dated one guy ever before. Obviously, this is because the only reason she exists is for someone to someday win her like a raffle prize (women have come so far in film). She's also some kind of fashion reporter for Time Magazine, a publication well known for its hard hitting pursuit of the modeling industry’s dark underbelly. Luckily for Derek she's also the smartest character in the movie, and I don't think it's a spoiler to say that their relationship ends up being kind of important, not to mention a little awkward and boring (how you can have so little chemistry with your own wife is beyond me). So now that I've said all this, the following sentence should now make perfect sense to you:
Zoolander is exactly as good as that sounds. This is another turn of the century, mid-tier comedy that's probably become more famous for who's in it than for how good it truly is.
That's not to say it isn't funny at all - most of the characters are, at times, borderline hilarious. There are a lot of obvious, light hearted jabs at the fashion industry but they're softballs, and the number of celebrities who agreed to cameo for this movie probably informs the generally inoffensive tone. The slightly abstract plot is offset by mostly decent performances, but too many of the jokes fall flat, and in the way that jokes do when they're translated from Japanese. They sound like it might once been funny in their native context, if only you knew what the hell that was. So you just laugh anyway, and quietly wish Ken Watanabe was with you so you’d know if you got it right.
Despite all this, I have to say that if Zoolander had simply finished as well as it started, it might have a distinguished place in my personal collection today. But that ending - dear God, that ending. Obviously I can't get into it, but I'm having a hard time deciding how to explain this. Oh, I know. Imagine a slightly above average ensemble comedy with a slightly above average script, and a slightly above average cast putting in slightly above average performances. And then, imagine it going with the ending that's only three nose hairs less stupid than when Fred pulls a rubber mask off someone and starts lisping about how it was old man Smithers all along.
After such a solidly, slightly above average first 90 minutes, I'd have been perfectly satisfied with an equally slightly above average ending. But instead you might want to just avoid the last few scenes, and fill in the blanks yourself.