Movie Review: Zoolander 2

Zoolander 2

Directed by: Ben Stiller.

Written by: Justin Theroux & Ben Stiller and Nicholas Stoller and John Hamburg based on characters created by Drake Sather & Ben Stiller.

Starring: Ben Stiller (Derek), Owen Wilson (Hansel), Penélope Cruz (Valentina Valencia), Will Ferrell (Jacobim Mugatu), Kristen Wiig (Alexanya Atoz), Kyle Mooney (Don Atari), Cyrus Arnold (Derek Jr.), Christine Taylor (Matilda), Justin Theroux (Evil DJ), Milla Jovovich (Katinka), Billy Zane (Billy Zane), Fred Armisen (VIP), Benedict Cumberbatch (All), Sting (Sting), Nathan Lee Graham (Todd).

 

When I saw the original Zoolander, in a nearly empty theater back in the fall of 2001, I didn’t laugh very much – I thought it was, to put it mildly, dumb and unfunny. It was the type of dumb comedy that I normally would have never given a second thought to after watching it once and not enjoying it. But, a few years later, my wife wanted to watch it for some reason – and so we did. And she laughed, and I laughed, and by the end, I found I had quite liked it. It became a favorite of my wife’s – and although it never went that far for me, I saw bits and pieces of the film a number of times over the years (and probably the whole movie once and twice more) – and I have to admit, my first impression of the film was wrong. It really is quite funny. It’s dumb, of course, but that’s part of its charm. I don’t know if it’s smart-dumb – like the best of the Will Ferrell/Adam McKay movies – or dumb-dumb (like, uh, the worst of the Will Ferrell/Adam McKay movies), but to this day, mention a freak gasoline fight accident to me, and I’ll laugh.

 

I skipped Zoolander 2 in theaters – not just because the reviews were bad, but also because with two kids at home, the number of movies my wife and I get to see in theaters together is limited – and I don’t think either one of us wanted to waste one on it (strangely, we did go to the movies the weekend Zoolander 2 came out – but like everyone else in the world we saw Deadpool instead – good call on our part) – and I figured if I had any chance of enjoying Zoolander 2, it would be with my wife, on the same couch where we have enjoyed the original Zoolander on any number of occasions. Dear reader, it didn’t help. Zoolander 2 is awful.

 

I’m not going to say I didn’t laugh at all during Zoolander 2 – that wouldn’t be accurate. Every time Kyle Mooney’s Don Atari opened his mouth, I laughed. Mooney is playing a young fashion designer who cheerfully announces that “That’s terrible. I love it”, or some variation on it, every time he opens his mouth, and it’s funny the first time you hear it – and somehow even funnier each successive time. I’d watch a whole movie about him.

 

But not much else had me as much as smiling throughout the film. The film is ridiculously over plotted – with a vast conspiracy led by Mugatu (Will Ferrell), who has been in fashion jail since the first movie, and centered on Zoolander’s son, Derek Jr. (Cyrus Arnold), who was taken away from him nearly a decade ago after the death of Zoolander’s wife (Christine Taylor – here in ghost form), when it became clear that Zoolander didn’t even know how to make pasta soft. He’s been in hiding ever since – as has Hansel (Owen Wilson) – who is having some problems with his orgy. They are drawn out of hiding, and eventually either enlist the help of, or become enlisted by, Valentina Valencia (Penelope Cruz), of the Fashion Division of Interpol, who is trying to stop whatever the hell is going on.

 

Aside from being ridiculously over plotted – the film is also basically a string of celebrity cameos from the Justin Bieber opening on down. Sometimes celebrities are basically doing nothing except standing in the background, and sometimes they have actual roles as themselves, and are admittedly good sports about mocking themselves – including a number of high profile fashion designers at the end, who portray themselves as members of a murderous cult.

 

To me, the film seemed rather toothless in its view of the fashion industry – an industry I know little about to be honest (whenever I find myself scrolling through those slideshows of the Best/Worst Dressed Celebrities, I end up being stunned about what is seen as good and bad fashion). Zoolander and Hansel are portrayed as empty headed idiots to be sure – but the rest of the industry isn’t. The shots they do take – like those fashion designers as murderous cultists – are so outlandish that they cannot be taken as a serious critique. The parade of celebrity cameos distracts from the film, as it desperately tries to shoehorn everyone in.

 

The surprising thing about Zoolander 2 is how lazy and slapped together the film feels. This feels like the type of thing that was rushed into production when the original became an unexpected hit, and the studio wants another one the next year to strike when the iron is hot. But the original came out 15 years ago, and has been a cult hit (it didn’t do very well at the box office either for more than a decade – with rumors of a sequel floating around for a long, long time. Stiller is a talented actor – but also a fine director of comedies as well – Tropic Thunder (2008) remains an on-point Hollywood satire for example. Here, he seems like he’s in cruise control – and everyone follows his lead. Now, to be fair, I didn’t like the original when I first saw it – it took me a few years to come around on it. If you want to be an optimist, perhaps the same thing will happen with Zoolander 2 – but I doubt it. For one thing, my wife hated it more than I did (she did not find Kyle Mooney funny) – so I don’t think we’ll be re-watching it again anytime soon.

Movie Review: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Directed by: Ben Stiller   
Written by: Steve Conrad based on the short story by  James Thurber.
Starring: Ben Stiller (Walter Mitty), Kristen Wiig (Cheryl Melhoff), Adam Scott (Ted Hendricks), Sean Penn (Sean O'Connell), Shirley MacLaine (Edna Mitty), Kathryn Hahn (Odessa Mitty), Adrian Martinez (Hernando), Marcus Antturi (Rich Melhoff), Patton Oswalt (Todd Maher).

Unlike many of the short stories I read as part of my high school education, I can vividly recall the details of James Thurber’s masterpiece The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I suspect that is because I feel a certain affinity and affection for Thurber’s daydreaming protagonist – a man who lives out elaborate fantasies in his head as a way of dealing with his mundane everyday life. I never saw the 1947 film version with Danny Kaye – I gather from a brief plot description on Wikipedia that it altered Thurber’s story almost entirely, basically taking the premise of a daydreamer, and jettisoning the rest. The same can be said of Ben Stiller’s version of the story. There really is not much that the original story and this movie have in common, except its main character likes to daydream. But while Thurber’s title character remains “inscrutable to the last” – still daydreaming at the end of the story, Stiller basically uses the idea as a jumping off point for a big screen vanity project. Perhaps if I didn’t love the original story so much, I would have enjoyed this film a little more.

Stiller directs and stars in the title role. His Walter Mitty is a “Negative Asset Manager” for Life Magazine – which essentially means he is in charge of all the photos that come in. As the movie opens, Life has been sold, and some corporate hatchet men – led by Ted Hendricks (Adam Scott) have been sent in to publish a final issue, and then transition the magazine online. This will involve massive layoffs, and Walter has little hope of keeping his job. Not only is someone who processes film not really necessary for an online magazine, his frequent daydreams come at the worst possible times – often leading Ted to think Walter is a dimwit. Many of his fantasies involve him doing something heroic, or confronting Ted, or getting Cheryl Melhoff (Kristen Wiig) – a new hire in his department – to fall in love with him. The action begins when famed photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn) sends in his last roll of film to be developed – and has chosen photo 25 to be the final cover of Life Magazine. The only problem is that the photo is missing. After enlisting Cheryl to try and figure out the mystery – which ultimately leads nowhere – she convinces Walter to have a real adventure – so he sets out to track down O’Connell himself. The only problem is he is somewhat of a nomad – he could be anywhere – but Walter gradually puts together the clues, and travels around the world on his quest – and finally gets outside his own head.

A mainstream Hollywood film version of Thurber’s Walter Mitty is probably impossible – it is a dark story even though it is quite humorous – but it ends with Mitty just as lost in his daydreams as ever. There is not great uplift or message to the movie that Hollywood likes. I suspected before walking into the theater that the movie would try to make everything more inspiring than Thurber’s original – and that is pretty much exactly what Stiller and company do.

I liked the first half of the movie more than the second half. It’s here where Walter spends his time in his daydreams, and makes ever so little progress into getting into the real world. There is something charming about his fantasies, even when they are a little goofy. But when Walter heads out to see the world – and gets himself involved in one adventure after another, the film lost me. The contrast between what Walter was like before and what he does when he’s out in the real world was just too great for me to reconcile in my head. Seeing the world is one thing – jumping out of helicopters, running away from active volcanoes, and climbing giant mountains – is another thing altogether.

Stiller is fine in the lead role though. The supporting cast is mainly wasted – given one note roles to play, and although Wiig, Penn, Scott along with Shirley Maclaine and Kathryn Hahn, who play Walter’s mother and sister, play their one notes well, that doesn’t make them particularly deep roles. As a director, Stiller keeps pushing himself a little deeper each time out. This is inarguably his most ambitious film yet – and if he doesn’t quite pull it off, I admire him for trying.

It isn’t really fair to compare the film so heavily to the story that it is inspired by. If a movie works, it works and if it doesn’t it doesn’t, no matter how closely it follows what inspired it. Therein lies the problem with Stiller’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty – it doesn’t really work. When you take something as short and perfect as James Thurber’s story and then radically change it, you have to give the audience something that makes them forget the story’s origins. The movie never does that.