Recent numbers show Ben Stillers latest cash grab Zoolander 2 flopping hard at the box office. For the most part, this seems due to sharing a release weekend with Ryan Reynolds superhero comedy Deadpool, but it could also be argued that Zoolander is cursed with timing, having released the original movie right after 9/11. Zoolander, despite being highly quotable on the internet, only achieved about 60% ratings across the board so this week, since we can’t do Zoolander 2 until it comes out on DVD, we’ll be striking our best blue steel and seeing if this super model comedy needs to take a walk.
For the uninitiated, Zoolander is the story of male model Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller), a legend of the male modelling world and a model idiot. After facing the end of his career and the loss of his best friends in a tragic gasoline fight, Derek is hired by hit designer Mugatu (Will Ferrell) to be the star of his new fashion line. However, Mugatu’s true purpose is to brainwash Derek into assassinating the Prime Minister of Malaysia because the Prime Minister has been trying to abolish child slavery, thereby cutting the profits for fashions top designers.
Now, it should be repeated that Zoolander originally released right after 9/11. It has been about 15 years since this movie came out, and since a lot of the movie is based on cultural references and cameos, it’s safe to say it has not aged well. Quite frankly unless you paid attention in the 2000’s, you won’t recognise half the ‘celebrity’ cameos, and the fact is that they were only thrown in and remind me of that guy at a party who’s always like “Hey, I was in a room with Donald Trump and Natalie Portman once! Wanna see the pictures?” The only cameo really worth mentioning is the legendary David Bowie, who in true fashion stole the scene. Aside from these cameos there are small cultural jokes such as a mobile phone the size of a grape to poke fun at how small phones were getting (jokes on you, we’re all about the big screens these days!), and a scene where 2 models try desperately to turn on an old school Apple desktop computer that would simply be unrecognisable to people these days. Seriously, does anyone under the age of 16 even know that Apple used to make devices that weren’t as thin as a super model? Shame they missed the chance to make that reference!
Furthermore, the comedy in Zoolander, while having its own moments of charm and hence giving birth to several memes, feels just as stupid as the characters themselves. It’s like they were trying too hard to be silly in an attempt to mock the fashion industry, but instead fell flat on their faces. I mean for God’s sake, this is a film with a midget orgy scene, an entire sequence of Will Ferrell dressed up as a child with a giant lollipop and a scene where Andy Dick, dressed as a female masseuse, tries to hit Ben Stillers erection with feathers. It moves from simply silly to over the top, and yet doesn’t reach far enough. In my opinion there’s a certain point between ‘Just Enough Silliness’ and ‘Off The Walls Insanity’ where everything will just fall flat, and Zoolander seems to live in that gap.
As for the plot, I will give them props for coming up with something original. The idea that the heads of the fashion industry would murder a political figure in an effort to protect their interests using a male modelEven the scenes purely added for comedic effect, such as the sequence where Derek returns to his coal mining roots to reconnect with his father and brothers feel unneccessary and just pass as another poor excuse to squeeze more cameos into the film. You could have cut out half the sequences in the movie, told the same story and had it make the same amount of sense with a one hour run time. In all effort this seems like something that should have premiered at a film festival as a tongue-in-cheek look at the fashion industry, but instead went for a big release and wound up on the B-movie comedy lists.
All in all, if you’re wondering whether you should watch the original and then book your tickets to the sequel this weekend, I’d give it a miss. Just go see Deadpool again, you’ll find its references much more comical and far more entertaining.
