No one's going to give Zoolander awards for cinematic achievement. The plot is Austin Powers light, and saying the acting is hammy is like saying the sky is kind of above the ground. Still, there are a lot of goofy laughs, most of them pretty clever, so it makes for a good rental or tv movie.
Ben Stiller pulls an Orson Welles, or perhaps more accurately a Woody Allen as Derek Zoolander; aside from starring, he also directed, co-wrote, and co-produced the film. Zoolander is the world's top male model, a vacuous pretty boy (Who isn't all that good looking since it is, after all, Ben Stiller) who finds his world crashing down around him. His hated rival, Hansel (The hilarious Owen Wilson) is "hot" and wins Zoolander's award, Time magazine has just named him a "model idiot" and, to top it all off, an international cartel of fashion designers are plotting to use him as a disposable assassin in a scheme to kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia. It's just that simple!
Stiller gets plenty of mileage out of dumb model jokes, and his performance is the ultimate innocuous idiot good guy. It's also nice to see the blonde female (Stiller's wife Christine Taylor) break stereotype and far outhink her male counterparts. But the plot starts to fall apart at the end, with a bizarre alliance between Hansel and Zoolander that feels wrong, and a clunky and unexciting finale. And for all his weirdness as evil designer Mugatu, Will Ferrell doesn't seem too funny, just weird.
The movie is so slight, on a bad day I might have said avoid it. But in the right mood for the right price you can probably enjoy the movie on a certain level; goofy laughs and some good comedic acting.
Ben Stiller pulls an Orson Welles, or perhaps more accurately a Woody Allen as Derek Zoolander; aside from starring, he also directed, co-wrote, and co-produced the film. Zoolander is the world's top male model, a vacuous pretty boy (Who isn't all that good looking since it is, after all, Ben Stiller) who finds his world crashing down around him. His hated rival, Hansel (The hilarious Owen Wilson) is "hot" and wins Zoolander's award, Time magazine has just named him a "model idiot" and, to top it all off, an international cartel of fashion designers are plotting to use him as a disposable assassin in a scheme to kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia. It's just that simple!
Stiller gets plenty of mileage out of dumb model jokes, and his performance is the ultimate innocuous idiot good guy. It's also nice to see the blonde female (Stiller's wife Christine Taylor) break stereotype and far outhink her male counterparts. But the plot starts to fall apart at the end, with a bizarre alliance between Hansel and Zoolander that feels wrong, and a clunky and unexciting finale. And for all his weirdness as evil designer Mugatu, Will Ferrell doesn't seem too funny, just weird.
The movie is so slight, on a bad day I might have said avoid it. But in the right mood for the right price you can probably enjoy the movie on a certain level; goofy laughs and some good comedic acting.