Zoolander, written (with others) and directed by Ben Stiller - 8.5 out of 10

Zoolander, written (with others) and directed by Ben Stiller

8.5 out of 10

Surely, they should have stopped at Zoolander, the original, and not add Zoolander 2 in the mix, given that the second was so much less successful, perhaps we could call it a flop, but then this is the new age of cinema, where they recycle – way too much for this cinephile and so many others – the same theme until it may indeed become a joke in the vein of ‘enough already’…how many more Fast and Furious will you make? And the answer is as many as the audiences would tolerate, pay to see, according to their market research or computer models

Zoolander is often preposterous in its proposals, but we must forget about disbelief in the age of Trump, who is present in this movie (!) – if we have been tempted in the past to dismiss some stupid attitudes, some scenes wherein the protagonists act too absurdly to have us accept it as credible, when you have a president unable to pronounce words like United States, repeating oranges for origins, using furniture for future, christening the bosses of Apple (Tim Apple for Tim Cook), Lockheed Martin and others (to claim that it was the fake media, then to change the tune and say he is so smart that he just wanted to shorten those long names(!)

The premise that male models are stupid – or at least some of those at the very top – could be construed as insulting, but this is a comedy and repeating the previous mantra – there is an idiot in charge of the free world, so what is there to object to the plot – Derek Zoolander, Hansel and others are often humorous in their silly, inept understanding of simple events, indeed, most often in their incomprehension.

Derek Zoolander is first so dumb as to come to the stage where the award for the Best Male Model of the Year (or something like it) is given, take the trophy from the real Lenny Kravitz (who plays himself, as so many other stars), start an acceptance speech with ‘everyone thought that winning this prize four times…’only to be told that he is making a confusion, for the winner has been announced and it is Hansel aka very good, efficient Owen Wilson – a humiliating embarrassing moment for the brainless hero.

He tries to overcome this zenith with his companions, but they die in a freak accident at a gas station – later we would doubt this, because there is a nefarious – at least one – element in the picture, Mugatu aka Will Ferrell, excessive but hilarious at times, with a brilliant hair do – and he has been involved in the suspicious deaths of a number of models – and Zoolander announces his retirement at the funeral of his late friends.

A turn of events would have his agent, Maury Ballstein aka Jerry Stiller, the father of the leading actor in real life, convince the former Model of the Year to return on the catwalk because Mugatu, a fashion designer who has in the film the stature of the late Karl Lagerfeld, but is creating for his own outfit, wants him for his new line, Derelict, albeit he had never used the hero before in any of his endeavors.

The reason for this occult change of mind is that Malaysia had just announced an increase in the minimum pay for those who slave away for the fashion industry and thus would make a dent in the profits of the cruel, heartless owners of the respective companies and therefore Mugatu plans to kill the prime minister of that country, using a James Bond type of operation, in which Zoolander is brainwashed, in the manner of the Manchurian Candidate – or trump for that matter, who has not been brainwashed, for there had been no brain to wash in there.

The former Model of the Year would thus be trained in karate and when a trigger would be used, he would just jump from the catwalk to the place where the Malaysian Prime minister would be sitting as a guest of honor and assassinate him, in what is a ludicrous plan of course, but the point is to make is fun, not effective as a drama plot and it works to a considerable effect, due in large part to the gift of Ben Stiller, who contributed to the script, directed and played the main character, Owen Wilson as Hansel, Will Ferrell and the other formidable members of the cast.

After their clash and fierce rivalry, it is unexpected for those who chase after Zoolander to find him at the residence of Hansel, but this is where he stops, together with his new ally, TIME journalist Matilda Jeffries, and the two competitors are now exchanging emotional gratitude speeches and Hansel states that Derek had been his role model and they both share a Trump like IQ and probably EQ, Emotional Intelligence level…

The abode of the new Model of the Year is intriguing and amusing, for it works as a circus, where he has gathered all sorts of figures, exotic individuals that jump, smoke weed and then engage in what looks like an epic orgy, after Matilda talks about her period of abstention – anyway, lack of sex, if it was not intentional – where the two models ask her if she had no coitus (without using this complicated term, probably unknown to them) for a day, then a week, and when she says it has been two years, we move to the next stage, where Hansel takes his clothes off, invites the others to follow his example and Caligula may be envious of what follows next.

Some of the many scenes that are quite hilarious involves the family of Zoolander and the episode where he returns to his roots, after giving up modelling, to a miners ‘town – full of Trump voters presumably – where the bizarre, dressed up in fancy, high fashion outfits Derek fits in just like Immanuel Kant would, and the father Larry aka Jon Voigt and brother played by Vince Vaughn are perfectly comical.