Director: Ben Stiller
Stars: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Penelope Cruz, Kristen Wiig, many celebrity cameos
After a catastrophic acciden, Derek Zoolander (Stiller) became a hermit crab and went into hiding, while Hansel (Wilson) also disappeared from the world after his face was horrible scarred. The world moved on and mostly forgot about them, but after they receive a mysterious message they decide to reclaim their titles as the hottest models in the world. Meanwhile, there’s a nefarious scheme that sees various pop stars being murdered, one that sees them taking selfies as they die with a certain look on their faces, a look that reminds people of Blue Steel.
Zoolander 2 begins with highlights of the intervening years between this movie and the last, with some funny commentary about how people are quick to move on. It does do one thing that I usually dislike in sequels, in that it undercuts the conclusion of the previous film straight away, largely making the ending of that one pointless. But to be honest it’s been years since I’ve seen the first film so I didn’t mind too much. The overall plot is pretty ridiculous, and I think those involved knew it because at the climax there’s basically a scene where characters question some of the developments. It’s fairly by-the-numbers.
But it’s fun to be with the characters again. Most of the scenes I found funny are just when Zoolander is being stupid and getting phrases wrong, but overall I liked it and while I don’t think there’s enough mileage for another film it was fun to see them on screen again. The other thing I liked is that an antagonist, like Mugatu in the previous film, is named after a character from Star Trek. The celebrity cameos are sometimes entertaining, but also a lot of them are kind of obscure and often the characters need to call the celebrities by name because otherwise we wouldn’t know who they are. So yeah, like a lot of films of this ilk if you enjoyed the first one you’ll enjoy seeing the characters again. I thought it was alright.
