At box office: Big Ben

It’s a chilly weekday evening at the Lakewood Center mall’s Pacific Theatres megaplex, situated in a slice of Southern California suburbia, and people are trickling up to the box office window to purchase tickets for the season’s blockbuster comedy, Universal Pictures’ “Meet the Fockers.”

The movie, which as of Sunday had grossed more than $200 million after only three weeks in domestic release, features an all-star cast -- including Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand -- but one of the film’s major draws is the 39-year-old, curly-haired Ben Stiller, who has emerged as a box office powerhouse.

For the last year, Stiller has been on a roll. Besides “Meet the Fockers,” the sequel to 2000’s hit comedy “Meet the Parents,” Stiller starred in three other successful films in 2004 -- “DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story,” which raked in $114.3 million in domestic ticket sales; “Starsky & Hutch,” which grossed $88.2 million domestically; and “Along Came Polly,” which took in $88.1 million domestically. That steady box office clout has elevated Stiller’s paycheck to about $15 million per picture.

But defining Stiller’s appeal isn’t easy, even for his audience.

“It just seems like he makes movies out of ordinary stuff,” said Jay Reyes, 23, of South Gate, standing near the Lakewood theater’s ticket window. “Like, who’s going to make a movie out of dodge ball?” he chuckled. “Ben Stiller.”

Anna Rice, 46, of Long Beach, who was also heading into the theater to see “Meet the Fockers,” recalled an earlier Stiller comedy she liked called “Zoolander,” in which he played Derek Zoolander, a vacuous male supermodel known for his patented “look,” Blue Steel.

“I know it was corny, but I thought he was very good in it,” Rice said. “He is definitely marketable. How can you pinpoint it? Some people have it and some don’t.”

Oscar-winner Hoffman, who with Streisand (also an Oscar winner) play Stiller’s free-spirited parents in “Meet the Fockers,” said what impressed him about Stiller is that he isn’t looking for the laugh as much as the irony of a situation. “There’s a great danger [in actors] trying to get the laugh,” Hoffman said.

“If you are in a scene with him, you could not wish to be with a better foil,” Hoffman said. “He will set you up. It’s like basketball. He doesn’t take every shot, like some basketball players we know. He’ll pass you the ball because he’s interested in the scene.”

Hoffman said it also surprised him to discover that Stiller had an actor’s sensibility rather than a performer’s.

“Usually, people who come from comedy tend to perform the part rather than act it,” Hoffman said. “There is a difference. But I [realized after working with him that] he came from an acting base. The reason is, he was never satisfied, which is kind of a core ingredient to being a good actor.”

Owen Wilson, who has worked with Stiller on such films as “The Cable Guy,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “Meet the Parents” and has a small part in “Meet the Fockers,” said audiences were introduced to Stiller’s brand of humor more than a decade ago when Stiller had a comedy show on MTV and later signed with Fox, which aired “The Ben Stiller Show” in the 1992-93 television season.

“I think people sort of began catching on to his humor with his [Fox] show,” Wilson said. “It didn’t have a big audience, but it developed sort of a cult following. And I think he sort of built on that to where people kind of caught up with him.”

Stiller doesn’t rely on stand-up routines to make people laugh, Wilson said.

“He couldn’t be further from a class clown or somebody who is on all the time,” Wilson said. “Sometimes, that can be a little exhausting, having somebody who is always cracking jokes. That’s not Ben and that’s not his brand of humor. I remember like on ‘Starsky & Hutch,’ it seemed at one point the [advance audience] tracking wasn’t very good.” In interviews, “Ben was making jokes about that. ‘The comedy team that nobody wants to see!’ It was like slightly black humor.”

Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler may have bigger marquee names, but Stiller’s box office appeal is growing. It now reaches beyond U.S. shores, where American comedy doesn’t easily translate with foreign audiences. As evidence, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Stiller’s blockbuster “Meet the Parents,” took in 49.7%, or $164.2 million, of its total ticket sales abroad, while last year’s “Along Came Polly” garnered 48.5%, or $83 million, in foreign markets.

That is not to say Stiller hasn’t had his share of flops. “Envy,” a DreamWorks comedy costarring Jack Black, grossed only $12.2 million last year, and his pairing with Drew Barrymore in the Miramax comedy “Duplex” sank like a stone after sitting on a shelf for at least a year, grossing a mere $9.7 million. But when he’s in the right vehicle, he reaches all demographics, from teens to adults and both sexes as well, studio executives agree, and his movies are not astronomically expensive (“Fockers,” on which Universal partnered with DreamWorks, cost an estimated $80 million).

Stiller can be funny whether he’s doing broad comedy or just delivering a pained expression, said Stacey Snicer, head of Universal Pictures.

There’s a scene in “Meet the Fockers,” Snider said, in which the families are sitting around having drinks outside when Hoffman strays into an inappropriate conversation, and Stiller falls backward out of his chair. “You can’t help but laugh when he flips over,” Snider said.

Conversely, there’s another scene where Hoffman becomes upset after learning that his son had gone duck hunting with father-in-law-to-be De Niro, who is looking on.

“Ben doesn’t say anything,” Snider says. “He knows he [loses] either way. He makes this great perplexed face and decides it’s best to exit. People [in the audience] howl at nothing.”

Jay Roach, who directed “Meet the Parents” and “Meet the Fockers,” compares Stiller to the great silent film comedian Buster Keaton.

“There’s the same look in his eyes,” Roach noted, a feeling that “I want this thing so much but something is about to prevent me from getting it, but I’ll cope the best I can, but there is an awareness of doom.”

Hoffman also cites the Keaton comparison. There is a scene in the film in which Stiller and Hoffman are pulled over by a traffic cop and Stiller is left shaking on the ground after being zapped with a Taser gun by the cop.

“I had just seen a couple of Keaton films and when he did that Taser stuff, after he finished, I went up to him and said, ‘That’s as good as it gets. That’s as good as Keaton would do it,’ ” Hoffman recalled.

David Thomson, author of “The New Biographical Dictionary of Film,” said he did not include Stiller in his book, but that could change in the next edition: “It seems to me he tries to be weird, he tries to be flat in his affect. Ultra cool. It definitely works. I think what he’s going for is attitude, though a lot of young men and kids are trying for that too. My 15-year-old takes him very seriously.”

Producer Bill Mechanic headed production at 20th Century Fox when the Farrelly brothers cast Stiller in their 1998 comedy “There’s Something About Mary.” Mechanic said he argued against using Stiller because he didn’t think he was a big enough star, but he realized what a mistake it would have been after watching audiences roar with laughter when Stiller’s character, a high school student who arrives to take Cameron Diaz to the prom, catches his private parts in his zipper.

“I said to Ben afterward, ‘I was totally wrong,’ ” Mechanic recalled. Audiences are able to identify with the “everyman” quality in Stiller, Mechanic said, whether he’s playing it relatively straight in “Meet the Fockers” or flamboyant in “Zoolander.”

Behind the camera, Stiller has been steadily building his resume as a producer, director and writer.

With his producing partner, Stuart Cornfeld, Stiller’s production company, Red Hour, recently renewed its first-look deal with DreamWorks and, according to Daily Variety, their first project to go into production under the DreamWorks logo will be a comedy titled “Date School.” The studio is also looking to have Stiller direct and star in “Tropic Thunder,” based on a script he wrote with Etan Cohen and Justin Theroux.

The son of veteran comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, the New York-born Stiller is married to actress Christine Taylor (Marcia Brady in “The Brady Bunch Movie”), who has costarred with her husband in “Zoolander” and “DodgeBall.” They have a daughter, Ella Olivia, who was born in 2002.

A hurdle Stiller faces is one that confronts many stars whose careers turn white hot: overexposure. John Travolta faced such a hurdle a few years back, and Jude Law is dealing with it now. Since “Along Came Polly,” Stiller has appeared in quick succession in “Starsky & Hutch,” “Envy,” “DodgeBall,” had a bit part in “Anchorman,” starred in “Meet the Fockers,” and he’s the voice of one of the characters in DreamWorks’ “Madagascar.”

Roach said he wouldn’t be surprised if Stiller eventually moved into more cerebral roles, the way Bill Murray has with films such as “Lost in Translation.”

“He’s done a lot of serious roles,” Roach said of Stiller. “He was amazing in ‘Permanent Midnight.’ I think he is capable of anything, really.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Ben Stiller at the box office

“Meet the Fockers” leads the top-grossing movies in which Stiller was the principal star. The total for these 10 movies in which he was a main character is just more than $1 billion.

*--* Film Domestic gross (year released) (in millions) Meet the Fockers (2004) $204.3* There’s Something About Mary (1998) $176.50 Meet the Parents (2000) $166.20 DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story (2004) $114.30 Starsky & Hutch (2004) $88.20 Along Came Polly (2004) $52.40 The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) $45.20 Zoolander (2001) $37.00 Keeping the Faith (2000) $29.80 Mystery Men (1999) $88.10

*--*

*Estimated

Source: Boxofficemojo.com

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Box Office

Preliminary results (in millions) based on studio projections.

*--* Movie 3-day gross Total Meet the Fockers $28.5 $204.3 White Noise 24.1 24.1 The Aviator 7.6 42.9 Lemony Snicket’s A Series BTDof Unfortunate Events 7.4 105.5 Fat Albert 6 41.3 Ocean’s Twelve 5.4 115.4 National Treasure 4.5 160.7 Spanglish 4.4 37.7 The Phantom of the Opera 3.4 21.6 The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou 2.7 19.4

*--*

Source: Nielsen EDI Inc.