Zoolander 2

Did you like “Zoolander”? Good, then you’ll like Zoolander 2.

More Blue Steel than Magnum, this is a perfectly serviceable sequel, but dogged by repetition, it lacks the original's speed and sizzle.

Hits a decent count of guffaws and chortles, enough to make for a solid rental or something you settle on while channel surfing on an idle afternoon.

Zoolander 2 feels like a hasty collection of last-minute comedy panic attacks.

Zoolander 2 has enough plots for several movies. They are so jammed together that they more or less cancel each other out.

There are no build-ups or pay-offs here, just a lot of random moments of people saying stupid stuff, and fashion people being gently lampooned.

Lazily written by Stiller and three collaborators (including Justin Theroux), this is the kind of lame, warmed-over movie that gives sequels a bad name. For “Zoolander” fans, however, it resembles a betrayal of public trust.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Clearly not as good as the first, which is a classic in my estimation. But this is still so packed with strong images and cheery lunacy, that you can brush off the numerous fizzles and flops.

Zoolander 2 is infrequently hilarious, and does a fine job continuing the spirit of the first movie. ben Stiller is great, and the jokes are beautifully stupid. Lots of dumb fun. My kind of stupid humor.

Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson are back on the runway as male models Derek Zoolander and Hansel, perhaps sporting a few extra wrinkles around the eyes. The original Zoolander was a sleeper hit, pulling a shocking number of laughs from what seemed like a very thin concept, and its delayed sequel, unfortunately, pales in comparison. Like many folllow-up efforts from the same genre (Austin Powers and The Hangover, I'm looking at you here), Zoolander 2 falls into the trap of constantly re-hashing the gags that worked the first time. Why innovate when the well's right there waiting for you, after all? What new material it does bring to the screen is often good for a chuckle, but not deep enough to mine for richer material. Benedict Cumberbatch's gender-bending role as a competing supermodel is a great example. We get about three minutes of big laughs from the character, but then he's spent and is summarily cast aside. Even the returning faces seem lighter and less interesting, particularly Will Ferrell's big-haired fashion mogul, Mugatu. They're propped up with sight gags and cheap one-liners, but there's no masking the lack of inspiration in their writing and performance. Humor arrives in sprinkles throughout this film, like a series of not-quite-ready pitches for an upcoming episode of SNL, but that's not good enough to make up for a bland, obvious storyline and an aimless, meandering pair of central character arcs. Pointless and under-cooked, or maybe over-cooked, considering how long it was left to incubate. Whatever the cause, it's a swing and a miss.

I really wanted to like this movie, I really did, but it was just bad. Whoever wrote the script needs to be thrown in a trashcan and then rolled off of a waterfall. It makes me sad too because I loved Zoolander 1, which was a touching reimagining of the film October Sky about a boy with a stubborn father who decided to not go into the family business of coal mining and instead chased their dreams in making rockets / being a supermodel.