Review: 'zoolander 2' Tries A Little Too Hard To Up The Ante

In case you don't follow the global fashion calendar, Fashion Week has just begun in New York, bringing with it a few nice clothes plus the usual over-the-top weirdness — bizarrely themed runway shows and front-row fashionistas teetering on stilt-like heels, swathed in feathers and smoothed out with dangerous doses of Botox. [...] back to the U.S., where our familiar heroes, male models Derek (Stiller) and Hansel (Owen Wilson), are living in seclusion on separate coasts — Derek alone, in the snowy wilds of "extremely northern New Jersey," and Hansel in the sandy desert known as Malibu, where he lives with Orgy, a group of possessive lovers including women of various ages, an animal, and — playing himself —Kiefer Sutherland. [...] the men are suddenly summoned to Rome to walk in a fashion show hosted by mega-tycoon Alexanya Atoz (Kristen Wiig, unrecognizable, channeling Donatella Versace and murdering vowels each time she opens her inflated lips). In one genuinely funny jibe at fashion designers, Atari's holding his runway show not at the lovely Trevi Fountain, but at an abandoned medical waste facility ("Totally toxic, but chill," he notes.) Benedict Cumberbatch shows up here, spoofing gender fluidity as a character named "All." [...] soon the guys are pulled into the plot involving those rock-star murders, and a possible actual Fountain of Youth. Zoolander 2," a Paramount release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America "for crude and sexual content, a scene of exaggerated violence, and brief strong language.