Is Ben Stiller wearing out his welcome?

Very shortly, Ben Stiller will appear in “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story” — the fourth of the seven movies he is scheduled to release in 2004. For any actor, seven movies in a year is a lot, but given that Stiller’s bankability is far from consistent, his ubiquity represents a considerable financial risk for the studios that employ him: there’s a good likelihood that many of the movies included in Stiller’s cinematic carpet-bombing will turn out to be…well, you know. Not hits.

But that doesn’t seem to matter: Stiller is inescapable. And he may soon start to do his career permanent, irreparable damage, if he doesn’t figure out that he’s very quickly exhausting the public goodwill he earned from the likes of “The Ben Stiller Show,” “Zoolander,” and “The Royal Tenenbaums.” Or is he?

Tara Ariano
Much as it pains me to say so: I think he is. It just may take him (or his people) a little while to notice that he’s on the wrong path since, on paper, he’s been doing everything right.

His talents primarily lie in comic acting — which, given his Anne Meara/Jerry Stiller pedigree, he comes by honestly — so he started out in exactly the right sorts of vehicles: “Saturday Night Live,” his own much funnier sketch-comedy series (“The Ben Stiller Show”), and some pretty successful film vehicles (“Reality Bites,” “Happy Gilmore”).

He had the correct instinct to differentiate himself from other, perhaps less subtle performers of his generation (Adam Sandler, we are glaring in your direction) by starring in smaller comic and black-comic films that went on to become cult hits – “Flirting With Disaster,” “Zero Effect,” “Your Friends And Neighbors,” to name a few.

But he understood the realities of the business, and made sure to do the big, broad, commercial “Meet the Parents,” before going on to kick ass in “Zoolander” and “Tenenbaums” the next year.

But…that’s where it all went off the rails for him. He stopped choosing (or writing) screenplays that were genuinely funny, compelling and original, and set to remaking “There’s Something About Mary” over and over again instead. I mean, “Along Came Polly”? “Envy”? “Duplex”? Ben, honey, we know you know how to portray hapless neurosis opposite the shiksa goddess of the moment, so you can stop now. Can and really should.

Sarah Bunting
My issue with Stiller isn’t so much that — in the movies he doesn’t write or direct himself — he tends to make the same movie and play the same character over and over. It’s that that character isn’t very likeable. The hapless-neurotic shtick can work — Woody Allen has fashioned an entire career out of his variation on it – but Stiller’s version is so angry all the time. His David Starsky seems so close to suffering a rage aneurysm that it’s actually sort of uncomfortable to watch. The Mr. Furious role in “Mystery Men” seems more and more like typecasting as time goes on.

With that said, I think he’s actually doing the smart thing by continuing to take the “Along Came Polly”-type roles, because I think Stiller has two different and distinct audiences — the audience who loved “Meet the Parents” and can’t wait for the Stiller-branded sequel; and the audience who preferred the more satirical (and less flatulence-based) fare like “Zoolander” and “Cable Guy.” I count myself among the latter, and “Meet the Fockers” looks like a cynical piece of crap to me, but on the other hand the first chapter grossed three times what “Tenenbaums” did.

I don’t love what that implies about cinematic tastes in the new millennium, but it’s possible that Stiller takes the third-generation-photocopy-of-Ted-Stroehmann roles because they do good box office, and that in turn gives him enough clout in the industry to get more personal projects like “Dodgeball” made. And if so, more power to him, because God help me but “Dodgeball” looks hilarious.

But I have no idea what he’s doing with all that voice-over work. Thomas Jefferson? Who in the what now?

Tara
If you don’t picture a short, somewhat simian Jewish dude when you think of Thomas Jefferson, then I guess you’re not much of a patriot, Sarah.

I agree with you about “Dodgeball” — but against my better judgment, because Stiller has let me down so many times before. You’re right, I think, that some of his fans just want to see him flummoxed by terriers or ferrets or intimidating would-be fathers-in-law, and that he satisfies those fans just fine. I don’t hold that against him.

What I do hold against Stiller is that every time he makes a movie that isn’t another “Mary” retread, it’s marketed to the segment of his fan base you and I are in — the people who still bust out our “Zoolander” DVDs every couple of months or so and are still entertained by the movie. In other words, if his latest movie isn’t a cookie-cutter romantic comedy, it’s marketed like it’s the next “Zoolander” — and so far, he hasn’t met those expectations.

What’s most frustrating is how close he is getting without hitting the mark. “Starsky & Hutch” should have worked: Stiller and Owen Wilson have a good track record (yes, even in “Meet the Parents”; I didn’t like the movie overall, but Wilson stole every scene he was in). Reuniting them with their “Zoolander” co-star Will Ferrell was a good idea. Adding Vince Vaughn (still golden post-“Old School,” in which Ferrell also co-starred) and Jason Bateman (back on the comedy A-list via the brilliant “Arrested Development”) would add new flavors, resulting in a delicious…um…comic chili for the audience. But it didn’t work: too much plot, not enough funny.

The same goes for “Envy.” Stiller co-starred with Jack Black in the failed sitcom pilot “Heat Vision and Jack,” which has since become a cult favorite. (Look for it in your local non-chain video store.) The two of them, plus antic “Saturday Night Live” star Amy Poehler, and a plotline based on poo, must have seemed like a can’t-miss comic package — until Barry “Crapzilla” Levinson came along.

“Dodgeball” seems to be a good vehicle for Stiller and his repertory company. Heck, I’d camp out for tickets to a movie with Rip Torn, Stephen Root and Gary Cole alone. Plus, it has Stiller playing a crazy, self-important loon, and not some milquetoasty bachelor looking for Ms. Right. It should be good. I certainly hope it will be good. But fool me once, shame on you; fool me eight or more times, shame on me. And on you, also, for having a compulsive need to keep fooling me.

Sarah
Ease up on Levinson, missy. You know how I feel about “Diner.”

I know what you mean about the near misses — but at least Stiller is trying to make the kinds of comedies that don’t pander to the lowest “American Pie” denominator. Also, he didn’t write or direct “Starsky & Hutch,” or any of the other movies you mention above, so I don’t know that we can hold him responsible for those failures. (Notably, critics don’t seem to; when his films do flop, they tend to look politely the other way, which probably helps him.)

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On the other hand, he hasn’t really written or directed anything since “Zoolander,” which came out almost three years ago, and if his rationale for taking the Greg Focker roles ad infinitum is that he wants the latitude to work on his own projects, he should be working on some projects, and from what I can tell, he's not. He’s apparently not the creative force behind “Dodgeball,” either, so maybe we should temper our expectations.

But as much as I’d prefer that Stiller spend less time on “There’s Something About Polly’s Duplex” and more time on movies he’s truly invested in, I don’t think his ubiquity hurts him with either of his fan bases — or at least it won’t hurt him for a while. If he slows down a bit in the next couple of years — ideally, to do a big-screen version of the “Grungies” skit from his sketch show — and if none of his upcoming projects bombs too horribly, he should emerge unscathed.

The bottom line
Maybe “Dodgeball” will be the movie that wins the Stiller fence-sitters back to his side; maybe not. One thing is certain: love him or hate him, his current schedule of releasing a new film approximately every three weeks means we won’t get a chance to forget who he is any time soon.

Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting are co-creators and co-editors of Television Without Pity

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