Zoolander

About Zoolander

Zoolander is a 2001 comedy film directed by Ben Stiller. The film is based on a pair of short films directed by Russell Bates and written by Drake Sather and Stiller for the VH1 Fashion Awards television specials in 1996 and 1997. The short films and the movie feature Derek Zoolander, a dimwitted male model. The title role is played by Ben Stiller, and in the feature film (which Stiller directed), Zoolander's agent, Maury Ballstein, is played by Ben Stiller's actual father Jerry Stiller.

In Zoolander, the supremacy of Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) as the world's top male model is challenged by the up-and-coming Hansel (Owen Wilson), an acid-tripping, Great Spirit-worshiping throwback to the 1960s. Derek is publicly embarrassed at the VH1 Fashion Awards when he tries to accept an award given to his rival. Thereafter, Derek is the subject of a Time magazine cover and article mocking his and other models' lack of intelligence. After Derek's roommates — fellow male models — are killed in a "freak" gasoline-fight accident, Derek announces his retirement from the male modeling profession as he is eulogizing his roommates' deaths — or, in his own words, "eugoogolizing". He returns to the coal mines where his father Spencer (Jon Voight) and brothers work, but soon finds himself rejected by his family and desperately out of place as a male model in a hardscrabble coal-mining town.

Prime Minister Hassan of Malaysia is working on reducing child labor in his country. The fashion industry is determined to retain Malaysia as a major source of cheap child labor, and is desperate to thwart the incumbent prime minister. Fashion mogul Jacobim Mugatu (Will Ferrell), helped by his tough assistant Katinka Ingabogovinanana (Milla Jovovich), is inspired by Derek's recent public mishaps and decides to use Derek as a programmed assassin to kill the Malaysian Prime Minister à la The Manchurian Candidate. Appealing to Derek's new-found benevolence, Mugatu convinces Derek to come out of retirement and model Mugatu's new Derelicte fashion line; the Prime Minister is to be the guest of honor at the line's premiere.