[6] In New York City, male model Derek Zoolander is at a low point; he is ousted as the top male fashion model by rising star Hansel McDonald, his roommates and colleagues are killed in a "freak gasoline-fight accident", and an attempt to reconnect with his southern New Jersey working-class relatives ends with the family rejecting him.

Journalist Matilda Jeffries, feeling responsible for Derek's downfall as she wrote a scathing Time article about him, becomes suspicious of Mugatu's offer.

Prewett reveals that the fashion industry has been behind several of history's political assassinations, including Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, and the brainwashed models are soon killed after they have completed their task.

Mugatu then attempts to kill the Prime Minister himself by throwing a shuriken at him, but Derek stops it by unleashing his ultimate model look, "Magnum".

Also making cameos were Lance Bass, Tyson Beckford, Victoria Beckham, Emma Bunton, Stephen Dorff, Shavo Odadjian, Fred Durst, Tom Ford, Cuba Gooding Jr., Fabio Lanzoni, Theo Kogan, Lukas Haas, Tommy Hilfiger, Paris Hilton, Carmen Kass, Heidi Klum, Lenny Kravitz, Karl Lagerfeld, Lil' Kim, James Marsden, Anne Meara, Natalie Portman, Frankie Rayder, Mark Ronson, Gavin Rossdale, Winona Ryder, Garry Shandling, Christian Slater, Gwen Stefani, Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Donatella Versace, Sandra Bernhard, Amanda Lepore, Peter Dinklage and Veronica Webb.

"[12] With his entrance accompanied by a freeze-frame and a snippet of his song "Let's Dance" (1983), biographer Nicholas Pegg describes Bowie's appearance as "willingly sending up the media's image of him as the ultimate arbiter of cool.

[13] It is described by Mugatu in the film as "a fashion, a way of life inspired by the very homeless, the vagrants, the crack whores that make this wonderful city so unique."

In the United States, the film was originally rated R for its sexual content, profanity and drug references, but was later re-rated PG-13 on appeal.

[20] Stiller defended his decision to erase images of New York's World Trade Center Towers from the film, saying he did what he thought was appropriate at the time.

Glamorama, a 1998 satirical novel by Bret Easton Ellis, tells the story of a vacuous male model who becomes involved in a plot concocted by international terrorists who recruit from within the fashion industry.

The site's critical consensus reads, "A wacky satire on the fashion industry, Zoolander is one of those deliberately dumb comedies that can deliver genuine laughs.

[28][29] BBC film critic Nev Pierce labeled it "sharply observed", specifically with its parody magazine covers and dialogue.

[28][29] Pierce thought "the frenetic buffoonery does score several big laughs" but could take time for some viewers to adapt to, such as in the first hour, "where several jokes fail to click and Ferrell's camp villainy simply grates".

[28] He called Stiller's performance "constantly amusing" if overplaying his "look" a little, but stated "the character's intentional superficiality wears a little thin at feature length".

[28] Pierce wrote how the actors contributed to the film's style; he argued that Wilson's "impeccable timing in the climax elevates the sometimes bizarre material to moments that border comedy genius" and that the use of cameos "lends an air of authenticity to the idiocy".

[30] Although praising the production design, costumes and choice of pop songs, Todd McCarthy felt the film did not have "truly confident visual stylization" to make comic book-esque villains like Mugatu enjoyable, and that long conversations were not fluidly written and edited.

[31] According to Stiller, years later in private, Ebert admitted that he had changed his mind and now thought that the film was funny and apologized to him for going "overboard".

[33] Fashion journalist Hadley Freeman categorized Zoolander as unique to other mainstream fashion films such as Designing Woman (1957), Funny Face (1957) and The Devil Wears Prada (2006); whereas these films usually employ the same critiques of unintelligent models, silly clothing and insipid business practices, Zoolander is much more surreal in how it puts these cliches together, as shown in its premise of male models being hypnotized to kill a prime minister.

[37] Filming commenced at Cinecittà studios in Rome in early 2015,[38] and on March 10, Stiller and Wilson appeared at the Paris Fashion Week in character as Derek Zoolander and Hansel McDonald.