A tedious parade of cameos, face after famous face masquerading as content. If Zoolander 2 is an attempt at achieving peak post-millennial self-obsession, the kind that its predecessor could only have dreamed of, it's a fittingly unsatisfactory attempt. Only a fool of Derek Zoolander proportions could hope to hear commentary in a film such as this - it's relentlessly, obsessively, obnoxiously silly, and it substitutes intelligence for jokes on the lack thereof. And it's here, in the humour - any comedy film's most essential component - that Zoolander 2 loses itself. Purpose and intent fall away, and the film lives or dies on the sheer strength of its ability to make us laugh; Ben Stiller intends to make us laugh with admirable regularity, but succeeds only sporadically, and incrementally less as the film wears ever on, its lack of ambition in all other regards becoming increasingly apparent. By the end, the cameos are only tiresome, the jokes largely predictable, and any shred of directorial competence (for, even in a film about the most ludicrously unintelligent, some level of intellectual insight must be present) has become a mere memory. And yet, Zoolander 2 is a funny film, if only at times. Select early scenes have promise, there's an excellent Donnatella Versace caricature from Kristen Wiig, and who's not happy to see Penelope Cruz on the big screen again? Amid an ocean of celebrities in an overstuffed cast of inflated paycheques, the girls are worth every penny.
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