A BLUE STEEL COMEBACK
Zoolander returns after long break
It’s the same old story. A movie gets a taste of success — Zoolander was the 55th highest grossing film of 2001 — and its makers rush to cash in with a sequel. Writer/director/star Ben Stiller paused only long enough to helm a few more movies and launch some franchises — Madagascar, Meet the Parents, Night at the Museum — before leaping back into the character of Derek Zoolander, a fashion model so stupid he thinks ideas are a brand of Swedish furniture.
The sequel, written by the same collective as the first, (plus Justin Theroux), is a messy but funny affair, with plot elements that feel like variations on The Da Vinci Code and The Temple of Doom. But its nearest comic brethren is probably the Austin Powers sequels, which also got the band back together, added one or two new characters, stole its lead’s mojo, and riffed on jokes from the first time around.
Whether anyone remembers those jokes 15 years later is a problem addressed with a rather lengthy prologue. We learn that the model’s brainchild, the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too, collapsed under the weight of its name and some poor construction choices, killing Mrs. Zoolander. (Seems a little reading really IS a dangerous thing.) Derek subsequently lost custody of his son, and went into hiding as (his term), a hermit crab.
Derek and his equally dimwitted nemesis Hansel (Owen Wilson), are called to Rome to help solve a crime. Someone is killing the world’s most talented pop stars.
Also, Justin Bieber. Valentina (Penélope Cruz), of Interpol’s fashion division, thinks the death grimaces of the victims may connect them to Derek, whose own carefully modulated facial poses made him famous.
What follows is a merry chase featuring many of the characters from the original movie — hello Billy Zane, Will Ferrell — and a host of new ones, including cameos from the realms of fashion, pop music and beyond.
Kristen Wiig pops up as Alexanya Atoz, a designer whose barely comprehensible accent is peppered with more weird vowels than a Scandinavian’s Facebook page. But she’s overshadowed by Kyle Mooney from Saturday Night Live as Don Atari; his every utterance is retro irony dipped in triple-negative sarcasm. When he says he hates you, he may or may not mean it.
Hansel and Derek can’t figure the guy out either. Then again, Derek can’t figure out words, and mangles even the simplest phrases. He speaks in turboprops, or that’s what he would call it.
Less effective among the new characters is Cyrus Arnold as Derek Jr., whom Derek can’t believe is his offspring, given that the kid is, er, big-boned. But he does function as a handy plot device — someone to save and bond with, in short.
Zoolander 2 doesn’t have the same surprises that made the first one something of a cult classic; how could it? And its plot, which necessitates a drawn-out explanation during the climax, is needlessly shaggy. But in the world of sequels no one was crying out for, it’s easily in 55th place. Fifteen years of development has paid off handsomely — in this case, literally so.