The original Zoolander was a pretty funny film, and a quite sharp satire of the fashion industry. But that was 15 years ago when the star Ben Stiller was in the middle of a period of critical and commercial success. Now his star has waned, and news of a sequel smacked of desperation. For the most part those fears are founded.
Stiller has co-written, produced and directed this movie and he also again plays Derek Zoolander, living in hiding following the tragic death of his wife. He is enticed back into the world of fashion because it may just give him the chance to reunite with his young son who has been living in an orphanage during Derek’s absence. The first 15 or 20 minutes or so fly by in a whir of news clips, montages and a funny enough reunion scene with rival model Hansel (Owen Wilson).
However, after that, the plot gets bogged down in a nonsensical Bond style romp, and the films moves at a crawling pace as Stiller packs in a bewildering number of ‘celebrity’ cameos. Most of those cameos consist of someone announcing who that person is (which was handy for me as I had no idea of who the bulk of them were) and the famous person having an unfunny line or two before disappearing again. This approach reaches a nadir with an excruciating scene involving Katie Perry and Neil deGrasse Tyson (no, me neither), someone who Stiller was so pleased with that he returns for no reason at the end of the movie.
To be fair, a couple of those cameos work. Kiefer Sutherland as one of Hansel’s pregnant partners (don’t ask) is quite amusing as he plays his role so straight and Anna Wintour shows surprising comic timing. Also there are a few chuckles to be had, mostly when rehashing jokes from the first film, but also thanks to Kyle Monney’s hipster fashion designer, Don Atari, who has some of the best lines and delivers them nicely.
Rating: 4.5 out of 10