Zoolander 2 review: a really, really, really, ridiculously average sequel

We're told that the fashion world – shudder – loved Zoolander, the 2001 comedy that depicted the fashion world as shallow, idiotic dirtbags.

Thus, inevitably, this belated sequel sees “name” designers and Anna Wintour pop up as monstrous versions of themselves so that we might somehow be convinced that they’re not, in real life, so monstrous after all. Good luck with that.

Dirtbags aside, there's plenty of silly jokes and clanging celebrity cameos to pass the time. Susan Boyle! Kiefer Sutherland! Billy Zane! And that just brings us 10 minutes in. Zoolander 2 opens with a high-octane chase through the streets of Rome and the death of Justin Bieber (the first of many geddit-style jokes). Rock stars, you see, have been protecting the bloodline of the Chosen One for centuries and . . . well, never mind.

Can former rival male models Derek Zoolander (Stiller) and Hansel McDonald (Wilson) unravel the spoof Da Vinci Code plot? Will Derek recover from the tragic collapse of the "The Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good and Who Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too" and find his long-lost son?

As with the first film, the sequel struggles to lampoon an industry that is already well beyond parody. But that doesn't stop Zoolander 2 from giving it a good go with a disgusting zero carbon footprint hotel made from recycled human waste, a splendid cameo from Benedict Cumberbatch as an intersex, mono-married model named All, and an excellent commercial from Kirsten Wiig channelling Donatella Versace: "Do you ever get that feeling when you see a teenage girl and you want to kill her and take her skin? We've bottled that feeling."

There ought to be, one feels, more laughs, but the hit-rate marks an advance of Anchorman 2 and the plot is only half as daft as the last Mission Impossible picture.