New Releases for Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Zoolander No. 2

Genre: Comedy/Sequel

Directed by: Ben Stiller

Run time: 102 minutes

Rating: PG-13

Format: Blu-Ray

The Lowdown: There’s a reason why most sequels are rushed into theaters a year or less from the original film’s opening date. They’re trying to capture and ride the momentum that a successful movie has and play off public goodwill that all too often will overlook obvious flaws from a second helping of a popular story or characters.

When you wait more than 10 years to make a sequel, however, that luxury no longer applies.

If anything, the fact that you’re making a sequel so long after the original film becomes the story, which means that now there’s scrutiny and questions, the inevitable questions, about whether too much time has passed and whether the fickle public will even care to revisit the characters so many years later.

But here’s the thing – if you make a good movie, it won’t matter how long it took to deliver a follow-up. People will respond.

Zoolander 2 is not a good movie. In fact, it’s God-awful.

Zoolander 2 isn’t a funny movie. The few chuckles it contains appear plucked specifically for the trailer.

And the 14 years it took to make the sequel do matter – Ben Stiller’s blue steel gaze is now rusted and rickety and Owen Wilson’s Hansel is in dire need of a nose job, and a shirt.

The fact that some very funny people all contributed to the screenplay is both sad and telling. It means even they couldn’t think of a way to make Derek Zoolander relevant in a world that is more obsessed with its own looks today than it was in 2001 when the original film was released. How is that even possible to not take advantage of such readily available inspiration?

Instead, Zoolander 2 lurches along on a dated and stale buffet of fat jokes and gags designed to mock the title character’s dim-wittedness. That might have worked 15 years ago. But it’s insufferable now.

The only interesting thing I saw was Kristen Wiig, both creepy and morbidly entertaining to look at, who appears like a cast-off from some eerie and weird David Lynch fashion feature. But I didn’t even make it to Will Ferrell’s return. And I like Will Ferrell.

I just couldn’t do it. I had to kill the runway lights early, probably 25 minutes in, because honestly, it was too painful to keep watching.

RIP blue steel. You should have never come back. You should have left well enough alone.

The Stuff You Care About: Hot chicks – Penelope Cruz is absolutely gorgeous.

Nudity – No. Gore – No.

Drug use – No.

Bad Guys/Killers – The four writers attached to this screenplay.

Buy/Rent – Neither.

Manhunter: Collector’s Edition (Shout! Factory, 120 minutes, R, Blu-Ray): The first, and still the best, big-screen adaptation of Thomas Harris’ work. Manhunter is propulsive, electrifying and beautifully shot. It was everything that fans of Will Graham and Hannibal Lector wanted – until the TV show came along and opened up a whole new world of possibilities between the two characters.

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