Ben Stiller: Actually funny?

Ben Stiller is a pretty easy target. Nauseatingly over-exposed with a limited range to boot, Stiller has pounded the same two drums for well over a decade. When he's not stumbling into embarrassing situations, à la Ross from "Friends," he's going bat-shit over-the-top, doing just about anything for a reaction (Heavy Weights, Happy Gilmore, Dodgeball, etc.).

Quantity, not quality, is Stiller's game. His resume boasts titles like Along Came Polly, Night at the Museum, Madagascar, and Starsky & Hutch -- in other words, Stiller's reworked Woody Allen's neurotic Jew for broad, Blockbuster-ready comedies.

Buried under the mediocrity, however, Stiller is actually a smart, talented comedian. A comedian, though, with one pressing flaw: He can't seem to say no. Like his buddy Owen Wilson, Stiller dilutes any effect his stronger projects may have with the likes of Duplex and Meet the Fockers.

Here's my point: Strip away the nonsense and look only at Stiller's output as a writer/director. Without films like The Heartbreak Kid muddying the waters, Stiller's real talent pops into focus. Suddenly he's not Ross from "Friends;" he's an idiosyncratic comedian whose films and TV shows are often too weird for mainstream audiences.

As director, Stiller has made just six major projects:

Tropic Thunder
Zoolander
"Heat Vision and Jack"
The Cable Guy
Reality Bites
"The Ben Stiller Show"

When you distill his filmography of all the garbage, you're left with a canceled-turned-cult-classic sketch comedy show, a Gen-X dramedy, a boldly off-putting dark comedy, an un-aired TV pilot featuring Owen Wilson as a talking motorcycle, a pun-laden and intentionally stupid satire of the fashion industry, and, his latest, a vulgar Hollywood satire that's already managed to piss off a number of special interest groups.

There isn't a single dud in the bunch (I haven't seen Reality Bites, however). "The Ben Stiller Show," which I am familiar with only via YouTube, featured a pool of talented up-and-comers like Judd Apatow and Bob Odenkirk. The show was entirely too strange to sustain an audience, which led Fox to ax it after 12 episodes.

A similar thread runs through much of Stiller's directorial output. At a time when everything Jim Carrey touched turned to gold (in the monetary, box-office sense), The Cable Guy revolted audiences and most critics with its discomforting humor and generally unpleasant tone. Stiller's penchant for the bizarre is on full display, best exemplified by a recurring non sequitur involving the Menendez brothers (Stiller plays both roles).

Most people enjoy Zoolander, but most write it off as some variation of "funny but dumb." As if the film's punishing idiocy isn't intentional. Released in 2001, Zoolander foresaw just how dumb we were becoming as a society, with dialogue featuring now-everywhere turns of phrase like "for serious" and "bra." I'd compare the film to a clever pun: Some chuckle against their will, some groan at the stupidity, and a handful think it's the funniest shit they've ever heard. I tend to fall in that last camp. Perhaps this comes down to a matter of taste, but it seems silly to me that the same people who take the high-brow road on lines like "Are you challenging me to a walk-off... Boo-lander?" find Stiller's mainstream, uninspired comedies so entertaining.

The same arguments go for "Heat Vision and Jack" and Tropic Thunder, two self-aware comedies as clever as they are absurd. Both are fun riffs on existing genres, and both could superficially be described as "stupid." But, as I've tried to argue, Stiller's no idiot. "Heat Vision" is an undebatable cult classic, while Tropic Thunder goes far enough with its satire to actually offend people. Like a good Colbert monologue, the movie apes the offensive, pushes farther than toothless satire, and dares you to fall for its trick.

As for "Heat Vision," it's almost best to go into it blind. It's even campier than Zoolander, thus even more open for simple take-downs like "dumb" or "cheesy." But, like all of Stiller's work that's worth watching, the incessant silliness makes it hard not to give in. The individual moments, when viewed in isolation, often seem stupid and needlessly strange. But Ben Stiller's talent lies in his ability to take 100 moments of lowbrow humor and assemble them into an inventive, intelligent whole. Zoolander is filled with 100s of dumb jokes, sure, but I'd never call it a dumb film.

For someone who leads a cinematic movement called the "Frat Pack," Stiller is a surprisingly gifted comic. Here's hoping it doesn't take him seven years to direct another movie.