Zoolander was one of the goofiest comedies of the early 2000s. It’s a good thing it had a lot of amazing talent behind it, or it might have ended up as one of the cringiest things anyone’s ever seen… like Zoolander 2, lol. I actually never saw the sequel, but I heard how abysmal it was.

Ben Stiller plays Derek Zoolander, a very unrealistic, goofy male supermodel. His mind is completely in another world, he seems more suited for an alien planet than Earth.

I’ll admit that I didn’t know (at the time) his love interest in the movie, Matilda Jeffries, was played by his real-life wife, Christine Taylor. They must have filmed this while they were still newly married.

This was one of the first (but not the very first) movies where Ben Stiller started frequently collaborating with his BFF, Owen Wilson. I’d imagine that’s one of the reasons Zoolander turned out so great: he got to work with both his wife and his best friend.

Will Ferrell was legendary and weird AF as the villain Jacobim Mugatu.

I also had a mild crush on Milla Jovovich back in the day, but… not in this movie. She’s pretty scary as Katinka Ingabogovinana.

And of course, The Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too is still one of my favorite movie jokes of all time.

Zoolander was such a great movie that making a sequel never really made sense. You just can’t one-up that kind of weird perfection, especially not a decade and a half later.