Ben Stiller, Penelope Cruz, and Owen Wilson (Wilson Webb/Paramount)

I laughed a few times at Zoolander 2, Ben Stiller’s belated sequel to his 2001 satire of male modeling. Then I watched the original film, which I hadn’t seen before, and I realized that most of what I was laughing at were 15-year old jokes.

They’re not bad jokes. For Derek Zoolander (Stiller), a narcissistic male model at the top of his career, to cry out, “Who am I?” is still funny 15 years later. But for Hansel (Owen Wilson), a narcissistic male model whose career was ended by a horrible disfigurement to cry out “Who am I?” is amusing today but probably won’t be tomorrow.

I love the idea of the Zoolander movies, that from an early age, simple-minded Derek with “perfect facial structure” wanted to grow up to be “professionally good-looking.” I love the different names given to seemingly identical modeling poses: “Le Tigre,” Magnum” and “Blue Steel,” like fabulous human paint samples in even less differentiated hues. I love that Stiller puts his family in these movies, from his wife (Christine Taylor) to his parents (Jerry Stiller is in both and the late Anne Meara was in the first).

And as silly as these movies are, they are not without ideas: about celebrity culture, shifting mores, mass media control of politics (and vice versa). But how effective can a celebrity satire be when it depends so much on celebrity? The 2001 film’s relatively short list of cameos ran the gamut from Donald Trump to David Bowie, both of which made some kind of sense. Zoolander 2 brings on an assembly line of cameos, some in brief character roles (blink and you’ll miss Christina Hendricks) and some playing themselves (Willie Nelson? Neil DeGrassse Tyson?!)

Zoolander 2 opens as Justin Bieber is on the run from a cabal who, it turns out, is murdering the world’s most beautiful people. Curiously, these doomed beauties are connected by their final act: each of them takes a dying selfie, posed to mimic Zoolander’s signature look, Blue Steel.

But Zoolander, now using the name Eric Toolander, has been hiding in the barren tundra of northern New Jersey. His career ended after a series of highly publicized disasters that included accidentally killing his wife and losing his child to protective services. But Billy Zane (as himself, returning from the first movie) talks Derek out of seclusion to save the world’s beautiful people, get back his son, and return to modeling.

This (maybe) sounds funnier than it is. It doesn’t help that the film is a visual mess. There may have been a problem with the projection when I saw the film, but an early chase scene of Justin Bieber running for his life looks murky and underexposed. Like many of Stiller’s films, Z2 operates against the backdrop of a broken family. (You sort of wonder if Zoolander’s failure as a husband and father has anything to do with the failure of Walter Mitty.) But neither comedy nor pathos really works here.

The convoluted plot involves Zoolander and Hansel teaming up with Interpol agent Penelope Cruz to battle their old foe Mugatu (Will Farrell), but the danger isn’t urgent enough to get anybody invested, including the cast, and weaker jokes and character writing doesn’t give anybody much to hold onto. By all means watch the trailer—it was funny enough that I wanted to see the movie. But the trailer spoils one of the movie’s few good new jokes. Of course I didn’t expect Zoolander 2 to be a classic, but I didn’t expect it to be so uninspired.

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Zoolander 2
Directed by Ben Stiller
Written by Justin Theroux, Ben Stiller, Nicholas Stoller, and John Hamburg
With Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Penelope Cruz, Will Ferrell, and a cast of thousands
102 minutes
Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, a scene of exaggerated violence, and brief strong language
Opens today at a multiplex near you.