Genre: Comedy

Director: Ben Stiller

Screenplay: Justin Theroux, Ben Stiller, John Hamburg, Nicholas Stoller, based on the characters created by Drake Sather, Ben Stiller

Cast: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Penelope Cruz, Kristen Wiig, Fred Armisen, Kyle Mooney, Milla Jovovich, Christine Taylor, Justin Theroux, Nathan Lee Graham, Cyrus Arnold, Billy Zane, Jon Daly

Running Length:  102 minutes

Synopsis: Derek (Ben Stiller) and Hansel (Owen Wilson) are lured into modeling again, in Rome, where they find themselves the target of a sinister conspiracy.

Review:  Full disclosure: I am a fan of the original Zoolander, and have watched the 2001 film multiple times outside of the cinema (the first Zoolander has the dubious honour of being banned in Singapore, due to its featuring the “Malaysian Prime Minister”). Over the years, the film had built up quite a cult following, and when Zoolander 2 was announced, I (and many other Zoolander fans) was rather stoked. Unfortunately, the sequel is a half-baked, overstuffed movie that proves pretty joyless to watch, despite the copious number of celebrity cameos and a handful of somewhat funny sequences.

One of the biggest issues of Zoolander 2 is the number of things going on at any one time. Not only does the espionage plot make a somewhat unwelcome return, there’s also the Zoolander father-and-son reunion, and then there’s the unresolved grudge between Derek and Hansel, the return of arch-nemesis Mugatu (Will Ferrell) and a whole bunch of other inconsequential plot threads, none of which feel satisfactorily resolved by the end of the movie.

It seems that Ben Stiller and his posse of screenwriters can’t bear to divorce the sequel from the original film, and almost constantly makes references to the 15 year-old movie, which is unnecessary and limits the appeal of the movie even further. Much as Zoolander has a cult following, this unabashed nudging and winking serve nothing more than make the proceedings feel ever more like drudgery, especially after the novelty of seeing these characters back on the big screen fades after the first reel.

It doesn’t help that Zoolander 2 is a little too self-aware for its own good. If everyone is in on the joke – and in this film that’s certainly the case, given the frankly ridiculous number of cameos of both celebrities and fashion industry mavens, even more so than the first film – then the joke ceases to be funny. While it may be a somewhat interesting diversion to spot the cameos (including Benedict Cumberbatch in an appearance that will haunt him for many, many years to come), much of it feels shoehorned into the scattershot scenes, and in the end it just feels like a chain of middling SNL skits stringed into a movie. Zoolander 2 is a sporadically funny film and thus not without merit, but it certainly is questionable if that is sufficient to justify paying the price of entry to watch it on the big screen.

Rating: * ½ (out of four stars)