Zoolander (the original) was such a quirky parody of the fashion world. It carried a genuine tongue-in-cheek mockery of the entire industry and blew up 'their' ridiculousness to the max.
Lets begin with the positive: Kristen Wiig as Alexanya Atoz is pure performance art. The styling and make-up is so on point. But even more impressive is her wicked accent. It was, hands down, the funniest aspect of the film. Every time she opened her mouth I died. Could not contain the laughter. Her dedication to that character's weird speech pattern was super impressive. The cameo performances were a delight in the original and that has managed to follow through effortlessly. More cameo's that are more irreverent and more outrageous than before. The cameos at the end are truly worth while. The few in the beginning are forgettable. The actors conviction. I cannot fault any of the actors for not putting in their best, assuming the material to work with was fairly weak to begin with, I found the actors conviction to the characters totally playful.
So what went wrong with this second installation? Quite honestly, it was the shift away from a parody of the fashion industry, moving towards a Wayans' brothers spoof of a spy film with a dash of espionage. And like any Wayans brother movie one can expect cheap visual gags to fill up free space - there's some really great lines in the film though (really great). Who thought that Zoolander 2 should shoot for the stars at 1h45m? The original barely hit 1h30m, that film had all that set-up and introduction to the world of Zoolander. Part Deux could have dived right in but instead played splish-splash with some really juvenile humour.
Yes, Zoolander is an idiot. He's an annoying character. A total self involved tool. But they save him from being despised by allowing the audience to laugh at him. Allowing us to point our fingers at his ridiculous face and laugh till the tears run. But that playground fun time is now over, forced to laugh with him. There's very few sidebar comments that grab our attention and remind us, 'Oh, Zoolander is a douche', not just an idiot.
Other than that Zoolander 2 is a totally run-of-the-mill comedy, nothing too special or outrages, nothing too memorable our outstanding. Fun but not overwhelmingly so.
