'Zoolander 2' no model for how to make a comedy sequel
If you hope it's possible for a movie to raise utter stupidity into an art form, get used to disappointment.
Ben Stiller's 15-years-in-the-making comic sequel "Zoolander 2" can't do it.
But it sure tries.
It tries so hard that Stiller's high-fashion farce almost hemorrhages a brain vein, one of the few icky sight gags not used in this cartoon action movie so ridiculously juvenile, you feel compelled to continue watching just to see how far below zero its cumulative IQ score will drop.
"Zoolander 2" begins promisingly enough. Justin Bieber gets shot to death in slow motion with more bullets than were pumped into the titular characters at the end of "Bonnie and Clyde."
It's not as funny as you might think. Then again, this movie isn't very funny, as it doesn't think.
At all.
The original "Zoolander" hit theaters a mere 17 days after terrorists destroyed New York's Twin Towers. Perhaps that visually dazzling work of nonsense provided the sort of cathartic distraction called for in the moment. Plus, it offered cameo appearances by David Bowie and Donald Trump.
Stiller starred as male supermodel Derek Zoolander, a self-absorbed, intellectually challenged character he and MTV Movie Awards writer/producer Drake Sather invented for the 1996 VH1/Vogue Fashion awards.
At best, "Zoolander" was a hilariously funny film short painfully stretched to a feature-length breaking point.
But Stiller's manic direction, retina-seizing set designs, an over-emoting cast, and an endless parade of fashionista cameos (such as Tom Ford and Tommy Hilfiger) kept scraping our attention off the theater floors.
"Zoolander 2" is more of the same, a slight comic concoction that believes its audiences are so clueless that they must have the jokes explained.
Here's an example.
"I made a lot of mistakes in my life," Zoolander says to his son, Derek Zoolander Jr. (a game Cyrus Arnold). "You were my best one!"
Any other comedy would leave that punchline alone because it's funny.
Nope. The screenplay (by Stiller and three accomplices) adds Junior's line, "I was a mistake?" Now, not so funny.
The plot, which feels almost optional here, reunites old rivals Zoolander and Hansel (Owen Wilson) just in time to help a sexy INTERPOL cop (Penélope Cruz) thwart a diabolical conspiracy by super designer Mugatu (reprised by Will Ferrell) to escape his Hannibal Lecter-like imprisonment so he can sacrifice Derek Junior in a bizarre ritual, as the lad is a direct descendant of Adam and Eve's son Steve.
"He's trying to get in your head!" the INTERPOL cop warns Zoolander.
"Don't worry," the supermodel replies. "It's closed for business!"
Stiller's low-grade mix of "Spy Kids," Indiana Jones, James Bond and "Project Runway" owes a big debt to the impressive array of motivated movie and fashion celebrities who joyously pop in and out of the frames.
Especially watch for Benedict Cumberbatch as supermodel All, Kristen Wiig as a cosmetics experiment gone awry, Fred Armisen as an 11-year-old boy with a bad haircut, plus Macaulay Culkin and Chicago's own Billy Zane as themselves.
If only we had as much fun watching this movie as they had making it.
“Zoolander 2”
★ ★
Starring: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Penelope Cruz
Directed by: Ben Stiller
Other: A Paramount Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for language, sexual references and violence. 100 minutes