Ben Stiller, star, co-writer and director of Zoolander, attempts the impossible: to make the fashion industry look more stupid than it is.
Even directors with more taste and intelligence than he - remember Robert Altman and Pret-a-Porter? - have fallen flat on their butts on the catwalk.
Zoolander is a dumb, noisy, crass, tedious and intermittently disgusting farrago, a vanity showcase of stale gags, hand-me-down ideas and a plot so ancient it is growing grey hairs (which would be better than the haircuts on view). Think The Manchurian Candidate, then cross it with a moronic clothes-horse, Derek Zoolander (Stiller), three-times "Super-Model of the Year" but just knocked off his plinth by his rival Hansel (Owen Wilson), a zany guy out of a Nursery Rhyme book who rides a child's scooter down Broadway and wears a blue feather boa.
Displaced Derek is brainwashed - an easy job, for obvious reasons - by rag trade designer Mugatu (Will Ferrell) and programmed to assassinate the prime minister of Malaysia, who's introducing child-labour legislation that will end the sweatshops which support the fashion houses of the West. It's this opportunistic use of real abuses and real misfortunes - like the film's set-piece fashion show on the theme Street Derelicts, with legless amputees pushing themselves along the catwalk in boxes on wheels - which makes this instantly forgettable trivia so disproportionately repugnant. It is shot like a promo for what the media call "The Beautiful People". On this showing, with some real-life fashionistas posing in passing-through cameos - it would be truer to call them "The Ugly People".
Stiller's real-life dad, Jerry, plays his agent, parading an ego bigger even than his son's, who says to a slimline Time reporter (Stiller's real-life wife, Christine Taylor): "With a push-up bra, you could have a very nice rack of lamb up there." That's the one time I laughed, and was immediately ashamed of myself.
Zoolander
Cert: 12A
