SCORE: 4.5/10

Zoolander 2 is just… weird.

I was pretty excited for Zoolander 2 because this movie had a lot going for it.  It had a great cast, a great trailer, and a huge fanbase of people who loved the original Zoolander.  I am one of those people who loves Zoolander.  It was a wonderful comedy that made me laugh throughout.  Heck, I quote Zoolander all the time!  For example, an English teacher once asked me what beauty is and I responded, “Moisture is the essence of wetness and wetness is the essence of beauty.”  Zoolander is one of my favorite comedies ever so why would the sequel be any bad?    Naturally, I would be pretty inclined to see what Derek and Hansel are up to these days.  Sadly, though, Hansel is not so hot right now.

I guess the movie thinks it has a plot.  Derek has a son and they were separated after Derek sucked at being a dad because Matilda died and because Derek literally fed his son dried spaghetti.  After a decade, Derek is trying to find his son and a half a dozen celebrity cameos later, we meet Hansel, who is apparently having ten kids.  HOW RANDOM IS THAT.  Then there’s a model thing and a side plot that involves a bunch of celebrities dying so Penelope Cruz goes on a journey with Derek and Hansel.  Twenty minutes and a dozen cameos later, Mugatu’s back and escapes from a prison (it was in the trailer).  Mugatu has some scheme that I still don’t understand because it’s contradictory and there are a bunch of celebrity cameos.  Then there’s the end – if you couldn’t already tell, the end would be a great indicator that the writers used a randomized, spinning wheel thing to determine the plot.  So much happened in the end that it almost felt like there was another fifteen minutes left to film, but director Ben Stiller got annoyed and just crunched everything in one minute.

Plot-wise, this movie was terrible because there really was no focused plot.  However, the reason why I’m giving this a 4.5/10 is that the movie made some funny pokes at pop culture and modern day society.  For example, there’s this one hipster character who made me think of some people I actually know.  Also, Kristin Wiig’s character makes fun of the fashion industry and that was actually pretty funny.

Speaking of funny things, this movie had another major problem.  A good comedy, in my opinion, has smart humor.  That doesn’t mean the jokes have to be esoteric; it just means that it doesn’t always have to appeal to the lowest common denominator.  There were parts that made me laugh, but there were more parts that made me cringe because of how dumb the jokes were.  In the theater, I sat in close proximity to a bunch of thirteen year olds (I don’t actually know that, but the combination of high pitched voices and low pitched voices with occasional voice cracks told me that they were).  Every time someone screamed or someone said a curse word, the kids laughed for what seemed to be minutes.  “OMG HE SAID ‘ASS’ OMG OMG OMG THAT’S SO FUNNY I PITY THE FOOLS WHO SAW DEADPOOL THIS IS WAAAAAAAAAAAY BETTER!!!!!!!!!!!!! #LIT #DEEZNUTS!”  What made the first Zoolander so great was that its jokes were nuanced and clever.  I guess the writers thought that audiences loved these jokes so much that they just recycled them in the sequel.  The jokes weren’t funny because they were either in the first movie or in the trailer.

There was, however, one joke that we saw in the trailer that was by far the funniest thing in this movie – the opening scene, which was the Justin Bieber death scene.  I thought that scene was spoiled because it was in the trailer, but there was much more.  If someone makes you see this movie, just see it for that scene because it’s perfect.

The acting was also pretty solid.  Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrel, Penelope Cruz, and Kristin Wiig weren’t phoning it in or anything – they were actually great!  Ben Stiller also directed this movie’s cameos pretty well, but then again, the cameos made the movie so I guess that’s a positive for Stiller.

Overall, Zoolander 2 is a movie that was just unmemorable and random.  If Fred Armisen’s character had more screen time, I guess that would have made the movie memorable (because his character is just the weirdest thing made of CGI).  If you are going to see a movie this weekend, I suggest that you go see Deadpool instead, but I’m not the boss of you so go ahead if you want to see it.  I’m just warning you that you might be disappointed.

So what did you think about Zoolander 2?  Feel free to let us know in the comments section!  Thanks!

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