The reviews of Ben Stiller’s ‘Zoolander 2′ are absolutely brutal

Paramount

“Zoolander 2.”

With only a 22% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, “Zoolander 2″ isn’t coming out of the gates with a lot of love.

The original, released 15 years ago and starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson as dimwitted male models who team up to foil the assassination attempt on the Prime Minister of Malaysia, became a cult favorite once it hit the home-video market.

But according to many critics, the long-awaited sequel, out Friday, lacks the silly hilarity of the original.

Before you put down your hard-earned cash, read how the critics feel about it.

The movie just isn’t funny.

The biggest gripe many of the critics have is that “Zoolander 2″ tries and tries but falls so short of the original gags.

“‘Zoolander 2′ tries to blow the same silliness out to epic, world-spanning proportions, and it just winds up feeling overstretched,” The Verge writes.

And the Boston Globe argues “‘Zoolander 2′ is just another lazy grab bag of sketch ideas acted out by ‘Saturday Night Live’ cast members and alumni, each of whom comes up with a schtick and then beats it into the ground.”

If those aren’t enough, here’s Vulture‘s take: “How bad is ‘Zoolander 2′? It’s ‘Batman and Robin’ bad.”

The Derek Zoolander act gets old in a hurry.

For the Chicago Sun-Times, the idiotic Zoolander character, whose fatherhood inabilities come into the plot, is just hard to watch.

“If you find Zoolander’s mannered style of speaking and his narcissism and his monumentally tiny brain hilarious, I can’t argue with you. I’m just not with ya.”

The cameos do make it tolerable — almost.

It seems like every other scene in “Zoolander 2″ has an appearance from a celebrity. But the one who tops them all is Kiefer Sutherland, who has a special connection with Hansel (Owen Wilson).

That was a bad omen for the San Jose Mercury News:

“When Kiefer Sutherland is the funniest person in your movie, you have a problem.”

It goes to show you, comedy sequels generally don’t work.

It seems like we can place “Zoolander 2″ in that long list of memorable comedies that shouldn’t have come back for a sequel.

“The only truly surprising thing about ‘Zoolander 2′ is that it exists in the first place. It trades its predecessor’s absurdist joys for the same derivative bombast that made ‘Anchorman 2′ such a disappointing slog,” Slate said.

While the Star Tribune felt: “…this ill-advised repeat resembles unsalvageable messes like ‘Caddyshack II,’ ‘Dumb and Dumber To,’ and ‘Blues Brothers 2000.’”

Only time will tell if fans agree.

A legendary critic even walked out of the movie.

Critics usually feel that it’s their duty to sit through an entire movie, good or bad. But Leonard Maltin couldn’t do it for “Zoolander 2.”

“The film was stupid right from the start,” he wrote. “I told myself that I was wasting my time for no good reason.”

Read more stories on Business Insider, Malaysian edition of the world’s fastest-growing business and technology news website.