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Tagline: 3% Body Fat. 1% Brain Activity.

Pizza: Maria's Italian Kitchen

THE MOVIE ZOOLANDER IS A LOT LIKE ITS CHARACTER -
IT'S VACANT AND DRESSED UP IN FUNNY CLOTHES

What is it about him? I want to really like him, and when Ben Stiller plays the Everyman, I sort of do. But when he does characters, he's just Mike Myers to me.

I've never been a fan of movies where people make big faces, wear funny hats, speak in odd accents and have funny names. I need more. The movie could still be silly, but it needs to be more. I know I'm in the minority when it comes to ZOOLANDER (2001). I'm aware people love this movie. One RMCer, sitting on the couch behind me, was even quoting things before they happened, and the late Premiere Magazine voted it as one of the 50 best comedies. ZOOLANDER ranks high in the Clueless Character Collection so popular back then (DODGEBALL, BALLS OF FURY, BLADES OF GLORY, TALLADEGA NIGHTS, ANCHORMAN, etc.). "But Rich, you just said it ranks high, and in the sentence before, you sort of said it left you wanting more?" You're right, I did say that. And I stand by both those statements. You want clarity, read a science blog. This write-up, I warn you in advance, is all over the map.

Plot-wise, ZOOLANDER is THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE meets JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS; vacuous male model Derek Zoolander becomes an unwitting pawn in a plot to assassinate Malaysia's Prime Minister.

Derek became a worldwide star by utilizing his trademark modeling expression called Blue Steel. But, as in any profession, his star is about to fade. Owen Wilson plays Hansel, a fur-coated Razor scooting Zoolander rival. After a move that humiliates Derek on the public stage (as much as any model can be humiliated), Derek exiles himself from the biz. Sulking in his feety pajamas (Hey! I have feety pajamas too!) prompts the character's inner struggle - "Did you ever think there's something more to life than being really really really ridiculously good-looking?"

To find himself, he goes home, to coal mining country - in southern New Jersey, to his family; dad Larry (Jon Voight, who with his expressions of disdain and later, love, stole the movie), and brothers Luke (Vince Vaughan, uncredited) and Scrappy (Judah Friedlander, credited). But even that goes bad. Well sure it does, how can it go otherwise? A male model working in a coal mine? Anyway, when Larry sees his son Derek playing a mermaid in a commercial: "I just thank the Lord she (your mom) didn't live to see her son as a mermaid." Now although I laughed at that line (and Derek's comeback - "It's a merman!"),

I found myself exhausted at ZOOLANDER's relentless attempts at making a joke every nanosecond. There's only so much I can take of dumb male models' antics, like malapropisms, misspellings (their sign that says "Congradulashions") or their actions (they smash a computer open because they heard that the files are "in the computer"). Or when Time Magazine reporter Matilda (played by Stiller's wife, Christine Taylor) admits that when she was young she "became bulimic ," and Derek's awestruck response? "You read minds?!" Also incredibly assaulting, the runner of "Earth to (fill in character name)", which is repeated ad nauseam, so much so that a character in the movie actually tells them to stop doing it. And then there's the dick joke which actually features Andy Dick. I guess this is my problem with ZOOLANDER - it seems to rely on low rent gags. Again, this is not to say there's nothing funny in ZOOLANDER. When looking to recruit an assassin: "What about Fabio?" "Too smart." I also like the idea that both Stiller and Wilson play guys who are "professionally good-looking." Also fun, the statement/reversal on the typical female model stereotype. And small moments, like Derek's read of Time's headline - "A model, idiot," rather than "a model idiot."

Rising above the lowbrow, David Duchovny doing an appearance as a conspiracy whistleblower (trust no one?). I loved that he looked like Kevin Costner in the conspiracy-laden JFK, though the filmmakers claim it was more akin to Gene Hackman in ENEMY OF THE STATE - another conspiracy film. I'll tell you who I also liked. Christine Taylor playing the straight woman. With all the over the top costumes and face-making, it was nice to have a real person in there...and...she was good. She was the anti-Will Ferrell, who, in his silly hairstyle as designer Mugatu, chewed the scenery even more than the others. I also liked Milla Jovovich playing a Natasha to the hilt. Her name? Katinka Ingabogovinanana. I thought both actresses committed, at opposite ends of the acting spectrum, and found their perfect places in this inane and sometimes funny movie.

ZOOLANDER is rife with cameos, from Christian Slater to Lenny Kravitz to Winona Ryder to Natalie Portman. There's also an uncredited Anne Meara (Ben's mom, and half of legendary comedy team Stiller & Meara) was on hand (father Jerry has a much bigger part). Even Bowie appears in a set piece where Derek challenges Hansel to a "walk-off" on the runway.

One thing I thought they did great was the packages they put together for the VH-1 Fashion Awards. Finally, a parody worth parodying! And kudos to VH-1 for making fun of itself (they were one of the producers of ZOOLANDER). The idea for the movie was appropriated, appropriately, from a couple of skits from the VH-1 Fashion Awards, where Derek made his first appearances, though others will claim it was stolen from novelist Bret Easton Ellis's book GLAMORAMA, about a dim supermodel who unwittingly becomes entrenched in an international conspiracy (that suit was settled out of court). Baffling more than this possible pseudepigraphy incident is that ZOOLANDER's script "took years" and "millions of drafts," according to its three writers, Stiller, John Hamburg and the late Drake Sather.

ZOOLANDER, directed by Ben Stiller, is ridiculously heavy on plot. For a broad comedy, there's more plot here than in its template, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. Personally, I think it would have worked better if the plot were smaller and not about brainwashing models to be assassins. But yeah, that's just me. Don't listen to me. This movie did great (the sequel comes out 2014), and people love it. I would have messed it up with my notes. Still, I can't help feeling that Stiller & Company thought this movie was funnier than it really is. Underneath the window dressing, there's not much there. It's like the emperor has no designer clothes.

Posted by Rich at 10:00 AM | Permalink |

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Tagline for Vol. 1: Here comes the Bride

Tagline for Vol. 2: The Bride is back for the final cut

PLEASE SIR, I WANT SOME GORE

"This is the 254th Movie Write-Up By Rich Nathanson."

If the old Klingon proverb is true, and "revenge is a dish best served cold," then the two KILL BILL movies are frozen stiff. And fantastic. True, they're like those cover songs you didn't realize weren't originals, but they're fantastic. What I mean is that Quentin Tarantino borrows boatloads of ideas from movies he loves and offers them to us with the giddiness of a 9-year-old on a trampoline. My logline review of every Tarantino movie remains the same: He and his troupe are having fun, and they want us to have fun too. Except for GRINDHOUSE (which, for some reason, didn't do a thing for me...maybe I should see it again), I love everything he's ever done, and although there have been better filmmakers, I can't say their batting average beats QT's.

BILL was originally meant to be one movie, but at four hours and change, Miramax and Tarantino wisely split it into two (KILL BILL VOL. 1 and KILL BILL VOL. 2), and released them a few months apart in 2003 and 2004. I saw 1 in the theater, but never got around to 2 until now. I'm here to report, as so many have reported before me, that this "double Bill" is astounding. It's bloody fun; truly a "roaring rampage of revenge."

The KILL BILL saga is told in ten chapters (five per movie). These chapters are luscious vignettes that play with us, toy with us, like a cat not killing its prey, but showing it off...and then killing it. Some scenes don't even move the story along, like Budd's (Michael Madsen) strip club scene; however, if you extract it, you'd lose Budd's strip club scene. It's almost as if QT is Scheherazade avoiding her (or Bill's) execution by telling 1,001 tales while keeping us amused, non-stop. It's some of the best stalling in film history. Directors worldwide should learn from this. Scenes and characters need to breathe. We need to know them, so when they die, we can cry or clap, or both. Otherwise, you're killing mannequins. Remember how effective that first scene in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS was?

Right out of the gate, QT slaps us around as if we were a character in his film:

Using the Shaw Brothers logo. They're the studio that made the Hong Kong chop-socky films that QT weened himself on and homages the shit out of in his films, especially this one.
An old choppy "Our Feature Presentation" movie theater intro.
Uma Thurman as the character "The Bride," all battered and then, shot in the head.
The title card "The 4th Film By Quentin Tarantino," perhaps a nod to critics and fans who had griped why it takes him so long between movies.
Nancy Sinatra's darker-than-Cher's rendition of Sonny Bono's BANG BANG.
Then, a dazzling (but not the dazzling-est) fight between The Bride and Vernita Green (Viveca Fox), a former hit woman, now a mommy in Pasadena. (This first sequence, told to us out of chronological order as QT is prone to do, is bookended and echoed in Bill's final chapter.)

Vernita is just one of the redoubtable Deadly Viper Assassination Squad that she was once a part of. There are four more. Darryl Hannah plays Elle Driver, who, on the way to an assassination, walks the hospital floor like a model on a runway. Yakuza boss O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), who when she was 11 years old had her own story of revenge, told in an 8-minute anime that's both violent and poetic. Budd (Bill's brother), assassin-cum-strip club bouncer. And then there's Bill.

I don't want to get too much into the plot. Why spoil the fun? Plus, honestly, the plot is simple - kill Bill. Yes, that's what's so wonderful about these movies. It's a simple revenge story dressed in pimp clothes. The Bride wants to kill Bill for what he did to her. That's it. Nice and clean. And QT takes us on a blood-splattered ride as she kills her way to Bill, filling us in on backstory when necessary, or not.

BILL flits around locations like a Bond movie on acid; Pasadena, El Paso, Japan, Mexico, Los Angeles, Barstow. Yet, as said earlier, it's really ten set pieces; ten mini-movies, each its own wonderful sub-story/puzzle piece. Each one carefully realized not just in text, but in everything. ART DIRECTION/SET: I love that Budd's trailer has records, an old stereo receiver, a TV with an antenna, a rotary phone, a MR. MAJESTYK poster, a stringless guitar, a can of chili. And those tiny dents in the trailer door's bottom, from where he must've kicked it open, perhaps while carrying grocery bags (with chili) home.

And as if we're being cautioned, the entire movie is painted in yellows - walls, ladders, trucks (the Pussy Wagon!), the inside of a casket, even Uma's HAIR and WARDROBE: that (perhaps?) iconic track suit, making her the meanest thing between Bruce Lee and Sue Sylvester. MUSIC: Yipes! QT's choices are, though at times incongruous, always surprising and always welcome. Sure, he nods to Asian themes when needed, but also manages to display other loves like apparently 60s and 70s soul, which are referenced in the dialogue and on the soundtrack, with groups like Kool and the Gang, The Bar-Kays and The Three Degrees. He even has an Isaac Hayes song playing during a fight. And then there's...

CASTING: Well, let me continue my QT lovefest with telling you how much I love his casting choices. Instead of going for bankable A-listers (okay, he does do that now and then), he opts for TV stars from the 60s and 70s. Can I tell you how much I love this? These actors are often forgotten, in favor of younger ones. No secret there, Hollywood's been doing that forever. It's a young town, a young market, I get it. But why exclude them carte blanche? So here we have Michael Parks (THEN CAME BRONSON, 69-70), David Carradine (KUNG FU, 72-75) and Bo Svenson (HERE COME THE BRIDES [The Bride??? Hmmm], 68-70).

All these actors play cool characters, like they did way back when. Parks and his real son James play father/son cops here, Earl and Edgar McGraw (Michael Parks played the same character in the Tarantino written/Robert Rodriguez directed FROM DUSK TILL DAWN). Parks (the elder) also shows up a little unrecognizable in another role in BILL as Esteban, one of Bill's father figures. And martial artist Sonny Chiba is on board as sword craftsman Hattori Hanzo (a character based on the [maybe] real life man that Chiba had previously portrayed decades ago). There's also Gordon Liu who played O-ren Ishii's lead henchman in 1 and Pai Mei in 2 (a character with a storied past in Shaw Brothers films from the 70s on). So you see, QT takes what he knows and loves, and runs with it. He runs with it hard and fast. One last thing I'll say about being an actor in a QT film; you better not be concerned with your vanity. You will, perhaps more often than not, look ugly and gritty.

Of course there's the overall filmmaking too. Sure, he uses Hong Kong-style zooms both in and out, but there's so many genres used in BILL that I'm surprised there's no musical number (though many of the fight scenes are balletic). In Blockbuster (remember them?), it would be in the Action section; but we also have Spaghetti Westerns, martial arts (kung-fu and karate), anime and even a touch of De Palma. Tarantino himself declares Vol. 1 the question and Vol. 2 the answer (True, but action-wise, I think he has it backwards; Vol. 1 is the answer, then Vol. 2 is the question). He was right about this, though: 1= East. Kung Fu. 2 = West. Spaghetti Western.

QT makes no secret about what he's taking from. In fact, he advertises it. That's how deep his love goes for these movies, especially the plot of 1973's LADY SNOWBLOOD, a somber, smart and blood-geyser-y revenge story also told in chapters featuring - duh - a lady and snow and blood. And 36 CHAMBERS OF SHAOLIN, a great kung fu movie, considered by many to be the one by which all others are judged. And as far as the Bruce Lee inspired Bride's jumpsuit? Was QT paying homage to Lee or did The Bride buy a Bruce Lee jumpsuit knowing she was going to kick some - okay, not some, a lot - of serious ass?

Okay, I can obviously yap about this for over four hours, so I'll start winding it down. Here's a few more things I wanted to mention.

BILL, like all of Tarantino's films, overflows with fun moments. Here are but a few: The whistle-blasting theme that comes up whenever The Bride finds her next kill (it's actually a snippet from Quincy Jones's theme from IRONSIDE!). The BLEEPs when The Bride's real name is mentioned because the audience isn't meant to know it (doubly amusing since, is there really a reason we can't know it? It wouldn't have given anything away if we did). The Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, as used by the same character, Pai Mei, in his earlier incarnation (though Pai Mei's been around since the 60's, I think he didn't use this technique until the 70s). That overhead shot in the suburban house, between foyer and kitchen, and the Kaboom cereal. Everything is playful, right down to the sound of the dirt being shoveled on to "Paula Shultz's" coffin. But the most spectacular set piece for me, clocking in at half an hour, is the Showdown at the House Of Blue Leaves. Culminating in a snowglobe-y fight (again, borrowed from LADY SNOWBLOOD), this segment, which can shift from color to B & W with the blink of an eye, is astounding. We watch The Bride decimate her attackers like a thresher in a field.

The only thing I don't like about the two BILL movies is that, after saying there would be a third, in December 2012 Tarantino said there wouldn't. But even that's okay. Because his movies are always fun. He does whatever he wants. It's like he's unchained.