Before reading the excerpted highlights link to the following review for a quick summary:

ZOOLANDER MOVIE REVIEW, by Media Circus

Now for my review:

The opening scene of Zoolander has a group of corporate heads sitting in a board room bemoaning the fact that the new leader of a third world country is planning to raise his peoples' standard of living by raising the minimum wage. This will cut into the profits of their clothes manufacturing monopolies and they are instructing one of their front men in the designer business to select a male model to be brainwashed into assassinating the offending leader.

This decadent, campy comedy makes light of the very serious realities of Western World clothes being made by slave labourers - let alone the covert activity of eliminating foreign leaders who don't serve these corporate oligarchs. But most brazenly of all this movie jokes about the ever-increasing reality of innocent people being abducted against their will and through torture being brainwashed into becoming sleepers until such a time as they are triggered to robotocally follow the voices they hear in their heads which are telling them to kill. And, just as John Frankenheimer, the director of Manchurian Candidate, had personally met JFK and RFK, so too does this director, Ben Stiller, have Kennedy connections: Stiller was on the cover of JFK Jr's successful magazine, George, in the August 1999 issue that hit the stands posthumously to John John's death the previous month. In his guest-editorial Stiller makes fun of the fact that as a youth his friends referred to him as John F. Kennedy "Jew-nior".

The movie opens with a news clip covering the recent election of the Prime Minister of Malaysia being watched by anonymous powers-that-be who subsequently discuss arranging for his assassination. [very similar to a clip in the JFK assassination movie Executive Action]:

"...and here in Malaysia there is almost an overwhelming sense of euphoria as the newly elected Prime Minister has given his impoverished nation the gift of hope by promising to raise the sub-standard minimum wage and child labour once and for all ...Already considered a living saint he has become the small country's greatest hope for a thriving future in the new millenium."

anonymous: "This is disgusting. How could you let this happen?"

fashion designer Mugatu: "I have negotiated my butt off, Georgio. I've tried bribes. I've tried gifts. I've even sent him some pet oxen. I mean, they LOVE that crap in Malaysia. But he won't budge."

anon: "Listen. 50% of my inventory is manufactured in sweat shops on the Malaysia border. Something has got to be done."

another anon: "If Malaysia goes what is next? My entire panty line is made in Vietnam."

another anon: "We'll all go bankrupt within a year. The Malaysian must be eliminated, Mugatu."

M: "What? No, I don't have time for this."

anon: "Perhaps you better go back to churning out novelty neckties and packing sacks."

M: "But my new fall line is almost due."

anon: "And I trust you would like to live to see your spring line as well?"

anon: "The Malaysian Prime Minister visits New York in 14 days. Do it then."

M: "14 days! That's fashion week. It's impossible. I have a show."

anon: "It's perfect. Invite him to be your guest of honour."

M: "That's not enough time. It takes MONTHS to recruit and train an operative."

anon: "...What about Farley?"

anon: "Too smart. This is a rush job. He's got to be extremely dim witted ...a beautiful self-absorbed simpleton who can be manipulated and molded like jello ... the point is we need an empty vessel, a shallow, dumb, vacuous moron."

anon: "And when he's finished we dispose of him."

M: "But who? I mean where in all of God's green goodness am I gonna find someone that beef headed?" [end quoting]

Skipping ahead in the script, the next telling dialogue I've excerpted is from the conversation between Zoolander, a Time magazine reporter (Stiller's wife in real life), and an outcast male model/conspiracy nut played by David Duchovny from The X Files. The scene takes place in a graveyard where the bodies of male models are buried after they've accomplished their missions as brainwashed assassins.

DD: "Let's take a walk. What you've stumbled upon goes way deeper than you could ever fathom. The fashion industry has been behind every major political assassination over the last two hundred years -- and behind every hit a card carrying male model."

Time reporter: "That's impossible.

DD: "Oh yeah? Listen and learn sweetness. Abe Lincoln wanted to abolish slavery - right? But who do you think made the powdered wigs and coloured leg stockings worn by our country's early leaders?"

Derek Zoolander: "Mugatu?"

DD: "Slaves, Derek. Without their free labour the prices on such items would have gone up tenfold. So the powers-that-be hired John Wilkes Booth, the original model-slash-actor to do Mr Lincoln in. I'll go on."

"Dallas Texas, 1963. Kennedy had just put a trade embargo on Cuba, essentially halting the shipment of Cuban manufactured songs about slacks - an incredibly popular item at the time."

Time: "Lee Harvey Oswald was NOT a male model."

DD: "You're god-damned RIGHT he wasn't. But those two lookers who capped Kennedy from the Grassy Knoll sure as shit were."

Time: "Well what about you?. How do you fit into all this?"

DD: "J.B. Prewlitt, hand model ... and that's when I found out I was in line to assassinate Jimmy Carter."

Time: "But how did you manage to escape?"

DD: "'Cus I'm a hand model Mama. We don't think the same way as the face and body models do. We're a different breed."

DZ: "So why male models?"

DD: "Think about it Derek. Male models are genetically constructed to become assassins. They're in peak physical condition. They can gain entry into the most secure places in the world. And most important of all, models don't think for themselves. They do as they're told."

DZ: "That is not true."

DD: "Yes it is Derek."

DZ: "Okay."

DD: "Yeah. Think about any photo shoot you've ever been on."

DZ: "Good point."

Time: "But if this has been going on for so long - Mugatu?"

DD: "He's just a punk-ass errand boy working for an international syndicate of fashion designers. You do a little background check on Mugatu and you'll find that he's sold his soul to the devil for a shot at the big time.

DZ: "But why male models?"

DD: "Are you serious. I just, I just told you that a moment ago."

DZ: "Right."

DD: "You're a killing machine Derek. They've programmed you.

DZ: "But I won't do it. I won't kill anybody."

DD: "It's not up to you. At the proper moment they'll trigger you - usually using some kind of auditory or visual Pavlovian response mechanism. And when it's over -"

DZ: "What? There's an after party?"

DD: "...You have to get the computer. He recorded everything in case they ever turned on him."
[end quoting]

The next excerpted dialogue is where Zoolander and the Time Magazine reporter knock on a fellow-model's door and ask him to let them hide-out at his place:

Time: "Excuse me Hansel. I don't really think there's an easy way to put this so I am just going to lay it out. Derek has been brainwashed to kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia."

Hansel: "And?" (shrugs his shoulders)[end quoting]

Zoolander is the 2002 version of Manchurian Candidate without the plot and character development. As a result it's a bit more difficult for the audience to make sense of it all, but to discerning viewers, the message is definitely in there. As the movie says: "It goes way deeper than you could ever fathom".

~ Jackie Jura