Zoolander - Movie Review
3"Zoolander" (2001) directed by and starring Ben Stiller is an unapologetically self aware silly trash comedy film which earns respect because of that. I think this movie has the most amount of major cameo and celebrity appearances in any film ever except maybe "Movie 43" (2013), but we would have to sit down and count them both.
Derek Zoolander (Stiller) is the #1 most popular and successful male model. He loses this status when he embarrasses himself to his rival Hansel (Owen Wilson). An evil fashion leader named Mugatu (Will Ferrell) plans to use Derek as a sleeper agent to assassinate the Prime Minister of Malaysia, because Mugatu relies on child labor to make his fortune and this new Prime Minister wants to abolish that. Derek falls in love with a reporter who despises modeling named Matilda (Christine Taylor).
Zoolander is actually so dumb, but it's not the painful kind of dumb, it's so bad it's good dumb. Thankfully the film is a satire and is aware of how terrible it is, so we can excuse a lot of the things happening that I would normally point out in other movies. Overall the movie is certainly entertaining and funny, which is the most important thing. The movie gets a lot better once Derek & Hansel become friends.
Zoolander did not age well because there are not one, not two, but three black face jokes, not one, not two, but three Donald Trump centric scenes, and it also uses outdated offensive language. The film never attempts to take itself seriously ever, so it's core is ultimately hollow and this is a throwaway thing that you will soon forget after viewing it. Matilda is an extremely weak character and love interest but I think that was intentional to be as sexist as possible for laughs, but I thought it was still worth mentioning. Ballstein (Jerry Stiller)'s motivation doesn't really make sense at all and while we can excuse 99% of the stupidity in this, I can't excuse the complete lack of police in this considering our characters have all the cards and there is no reasonable way the Prime Minister should be assassinated with all the information they have.
Zoolander is most memorable for it's insane cast list. You probably weren't expecting Natalie Portman, Tommy Hilfiger & David Bowie to be in the same movie as each other, yet here we are.
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