Attention all filmmakers:

1. Before making a movie where an actor disguises his voice throughout the entire movie, make sure, I repeat, make sure that the character is significantly humorous.

2. To prove to yourself the importance of step one, rent "Little Nicky."

3. If in doubt, refer to step one, then go see "Zoolander," but don't say that I haven't warned you.

One of the all time great mottos in the motion picture industry is that if something fails, repeat it again and again. Nowadays, studios don’t seem to care much about the story. It’s all about the marketing possibilities. How many movies have you walked out of in the past year asking yourself the question, "Why would anyone make a movie like that?" My theory is that they’re made because Hollywood knows that it can convince us to go see them. They market to the "young and hip" through outlets like MTV or by way of soft drink and fast food tie-ins. This was evident with such recent disappointments as "Tomb Raider" and last November’s "Little Nicky." Movies like these are the fool’s gold of cinema. The ads make them look good from a distance. They project the stars to be larger than life, and the movie to be a cinematic breakthrough. Up close most of these movies aren’t worth the time that it takes to view them, not to mention the price of admission. Instead we see a cinematic breakdown of almost everything we had hoped for.

Don’t get me wrong, "Zoolander" is not a horrible movie. I just believe that there are far better stories out there being passed over, because they would not be easily marketable to MTV viewers. Or, in other words, it would be hard to convince the "young and hip" to see these movies. It’s a shame that Hollywood works this way, but most often it is money that spins the reel.

Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) attempts to do for the male model what Austin Powers (Mike Myers) did for the international spy. The major difference is that Mike Myers had decades of James Bond films to mold his character from. There was a base that we were all familiar with, and Mike Myers built his Austin Powers character on top of it. Austin Powers is much more a part of Mike Myers than Derek Zoolander is a part of Ben Stiller. This is where "Zoolander" fails most. Austin Powers is rooted much closer to the comic ingenuity of Mike Myers than Derek Zoolander is rooted to the comic ingenuity of Ben Stiller. Ted Stroehmann, Stiller’s character from "There’s Something About Mary," is Stiller playing Ben Stiller. It is the comedian we know, and the comedy that has earned him his fame. I do like to see comedians take roles that are out of their ordinary, but there often needs to be some sort of balance. Adam Sandler’s Little Nicky is another example of a character that fails for this reason. The characters in these movies often work well in the five-minute sketches upon which they are based, but having to listen to them for an entire movie becomes monotonous and down right annoying. This was also the case with Sandler’s Waterboy, but not to as great an extent.

During the movie I found myself hoping that at some moment Stiller would break out of his boring Zoolander routine that seemed to drag on monotonously. I wanted to reach through the screen and repeatedly slap him, yelling, "Snap out of it Man! Snap out of it! Talk normal!" Owen Wilson’s performance was the only thing that seemed to keep me interested. Wilson played Hansel, Zoolander’s rival turned ally. He was excellent as the stoner model with a love of extreme sports.

I should make a note here that this movie had too many cameos to mention them all, but if you see the movie keep a special eye out for Vince Vaughn, Billy Zane, and John Voight who add a little extra character to the film.

"Zoolander" is another film that yet again attempts to give a TV sketch character a world to live in for almost two hours (Zoolander was based loosely on some of Stiller’s earlier TV skits). I think that we should get all of the Little Nickys, Zoolanders, and Waterboys together in a locked room for 120 minutes and see if they drive each other crazy. Then they will have some idea how we feel. Despite rare moments of humor, by the last half hour "Zoolander" left me waiting for the credits wishing I had done something more constructive with the past two hours.