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#142 - Zoolander
Ben Stiller, 2001
A shallow and foolish male model becomes an unwitting pawn in a sinister plan involving an assassination plot against the prime minister of Malaysia.
Zoolander is another one of those films that I've seen mostly in bits and pieces but never all at once, so of course I figured that given its brevity I might as well watch it all the way through. I definitely knew that I shouldn't expect anything approaching a masterpiece, just a fairly lightweight comedy that would be good for a few laughs. That raises a question I find interesting - how funny does have a comedy have to be before it can be considered good, and can a comedy still be considered good even if it doesn't inspire a reaction as spontaneous as laughter? Zoolander is a fairly basic satire on the fashion industry that I wasn't exactly expecting to be incisive (and it really isn't, bar the fact that the main conflict is driven by a political dispute over clothing sweatshops) but the main target of its comedy is its clueless protagonist (Ben Stiller) whose sheer lack of intelligence makes him the ideal candidate for becoming a brainwashed assassin. The plot isn't what matters here, but unfortunately the film doesn't quite have the jokes to pad out its brief running time. Stiller's funny-talking goofball doesn't generate that many laughs on his own, nor does his laid-back but equally simple rival (Owen Wilson), though their interplay with each other and Christine Taylor's strait-laced reporter is sporadically okay. However, it's Will Ferrell who steals the show as the film's extremely campy villain - though it's fundamentally very similar to your average Ferrell performance, here his scenes are practically a relief from Stiller's very limited performance. The film also plays host to a cavalcade of cameo appearances, few of which are actually worthwhile (the best example being David Bowie appearing suddenly to judge a "walk-off" between the leads). Too bad the laughs I got out of this weren't so much full-on laughs as the occasional chuckle. I'm kind of hoping this ends up being like Mean Girls and Anchorman in that I'll dislike it at first but grow to like it just as much as those films, but even with this expectation in mind I'm still not sure that'll happen with this film (outside of a couple of quotable one-liners, perhaps).
Ben Stiller, 2001
A shallow and foolish male model becomes an unwitting pawn in a sinister plan involving an assassination plot against the prime minister of Malaysia.
Zoolander is another one of those films that I've seen mostly in bits and pieces but never all at once, so of course I figured that given its brevity I might as well watch it all the way through. I definitely knew that I shouldn't expect anything approaching a masterpiece, just a fairly lightweight comedy that would be good for a few laughs. That raises a question I find interesting - how funny does have a comedy have to be before it can be considered good, and can a comedy still be considered good even if it doesn't inspire a reaction as spontaneous as laughter? Zoolander is a fairly basic satire on the fashion industry that I wasn't exactly expecting to be incisive (and it really isn't, bar the fact that the main conflict is driven by a political dispute over clothing sweatshops) but the main target of its comedy is its clueless protagonist (Ben Stiller) whose sheer lack of intelligence makes him the ideal candidate for becoming a brainwashed assassin. The plot isn't what matters here, but unfortunately the film doesn't quite have the jokes to pad out its brief running time. Stiller's funny-talking goofball doesn't generate that many laughs on his own, nor does his laid-back but equally simple rival (Owen Wilson), though their interplay with each other and Christine Taylor's strait-laced reporter is sporadically okay. However, it's Will Ferrell who steals the show as the film's extremely campy villain - though it's fundamentally very similar to your average Ferrell performance, here his scenes are practically a relief from Stiller's very limited performance. The film also plays host to a cavalcade of cameo appearances, few of which are actually worthwhile (the best example being David Bowie appearing suddenly to judge a "walk-off" between the leads). Too bad the laughs I got out of this weren't so much full-on laughs as the occasional chuckle. I'm kind of hoping this ends up being like Mean Girls and Anchorman in that I'll dislike it at first but grow to like it just as much as those films, but even with this expectation in mind I'm still not sure that'll happen with this film (outside of a couple of quotable one-liners, perhaps).