‘Zoolander’ 3D: Dumb day dawning

Geoff Carter

Friday, Sept. 28, 2001 | 8:52 a.m.

Not whimsical enough to be whimsy, not satirical enough to be satire and not profane enough to be funny, "Zoolander" is a misfire that may prove successful: I overheard members of the preview audience commending the slight comedy's complete lack of substance. "That was just what I needed," a teenage girl said. "It was so stupid, it took my mind right off my troubles."

Hey, right on. Why employ story, strong characters and actual laughs to do a job that could be adequately served by mind-numbing idiocy?

Ben Stiller plays fading male supermodel Derek Zoolander, a soft-spoken and clueless chump who mispronounces every fifth word and dreams of creating a school "for kids who can't read good and want to learn to do other things good too." He's at the mercy of a Time magazine reporter (Christine Taylor) who wants to expose him as a buffoon, a malevolent designer (Will Farrell) who brainwashes him into killing the president of Malaysia, and a rival (Owen Wilson) who, similar to Zoolander, isn't sure what he's doing but wants to look good doing it.

The main problem with "Zoolander" seems to be its PG-13 rating. Co-writer/director Stiller obviously wanted to make his "Austin Powers" -- a raunchy, 90-minute reading of a one-note character. Stiller created Derek Zoolander for the VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards telecast; the music network co-produced the movie and receives enough play to qualify "Zoolander" as one of their style-over-substance awards programs, with the requisite celebrity walk-ons. (When David Bowie showed up -- with a caption and a two-second blast of "Let's Dance," to eradicate all doubt -- I looked in vain for his co-presenter and generally felt sorry for him.)

Perhaps due to the VH1 association -- and Stiller wanting to reach as many kids as he would with a television movie -- most of "Zoolander's" satirical jabs fall woefully short. The fashion industry, as ripe a target for parody as one could conceive, comes out looking like a humanitarian group, for Fabio's sake. (The film pivots on the future of Malaysian sweatshops and child labor; Stiller opens that can of worms only to forget it by the last reel.) Practically everyone comes out of "Zoolander" smelling like Febreze -- even Fred Durst. It's a real contrast to Kevin Smith's similar (but much funnier) "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back," in which every last cast and crew member gets down and dirty.

Wilson almost saves it. As Hansel -- a supermodel with Roger Daltrey's hair and Brian Wilson's poor addled brain -- he strolls through Stiller's mess with the bemused air of a kid toting a surfboard. It's impossible not to laugh as he wonders "what bark on trees is made of," tools around on a glowing Razor scooter and tries to extract files from a computer using a fossilized bone, Kubrick-style. Owen Wilson would have made a more likeable lead, being the kind of guy who can elicit intelligent laughs from dumb jokes. Stiller could do worse than to learn from him -- to learn that deliberate stupidity is a means to an end, and not an end in itself.

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