Almost 15 years after the first film, Ben Stiller resurrects Derek Zoolander. Indeed, news of the shoot had made headlines: Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson had closed the Valentino show at Paris Fashion Week in March. The duo posed with models, designers and even Anna Wintour. No, it’s just the return of Zoolander.
If you haven’t yet seen the first film, vacation evenings are the perfect time to catch up.
Zoolander is a funny film, showing that the world of fashion can be funny too. Ben Stiller’s humor is not to be taken at face value. His film could have been a simple satire on a superficial world where models only know how to count in calories, and where designers brawl over inflammatory quips… However, he goes further by calling on actors who belong to this famous world and who don’t hesitate to make fun of themselves: Milla Jovovitch, Heidi Klum, Claudia Schiffer, Vicotira Beckam, Donatella Versace and Tom Ford all appear in the first film.
Gags and classic stereotypes of the fashion world are deftly played out by Ben Stiller, in his third film as director. The story follows a successful model, Derek Zoolander, who falls on hard times after the arrival of Hansel (Owen Wilson), the new face that designers are snapping up. Added tragedy: Derek loses three model friends in a fire. In this scene, pathos is pushed to the extreme, as they themselves are responsible for the fire (cigarettes + gas station + sexy dancing = not exactly a good combination). Devastated, Derek tries to return to his roots. He takes refuge with his father and brother (in a world where people aren’t very “Good Looking”), but they reject him.
Fortunately, fashion calls him back: a new twist in the film. A shift to an action film, where Derek finds himself caught up in a plot that threatens international relations with Malaysia. (No more rivalry with Hansel: with the help of a Times reporter, they save the world. Derek falls in love with the journalist, Hansel becomes a close friend, and the birds sing under the blue Californian sky…
Boat? It’s precisely because Ben Stiller manages to play on stereotypes of beauty and intelligence, city and country, in the same film; and then manages to take us from the story of a stupid death to a plot against Malaysia that the film takes on its full thickness.
With its cult lines and legendary pose, Zoolander is both a film about fashion and about American humor. With their penchant for parody, Americans don’t hesitate to make fun of themselves, their habits and their ideas. The world of fashion is assimilated to certain ideas, which are underlined by Ben Stiller.
Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell are back in the cast for the next film, due to be released this autumn. Justin Theroux (if it isn’t the dark-haired beau who recently married Jennifer Aniston) is co-producing the film, which will also feature a host of other celebrities, including Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian and Kayne West, and Mika.
The film takes place 10 years in the past. What has happened in that time? Still the same “défit défilés”, the same “new pose”? Are Hansel and Derek friends or rivals? To be discovered in 2016, while we wait for strike the pose .
Warning: don’t stop the video before the end. It’s not a science documentary, it’s Zoolander. A fine example of Stiller humor!
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