Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Zoolander 2 sweats its silly ass off to please. The results are scattershot. But when it works - oh, baby.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
"Zoolander" captured its moment, and so does "Zoolander 2." It skewers the preening emptiness of contemporary culture with the help of people who are part of it.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
There are some clever bits and the satire is at times scathing but, on the whole, moments of hilarity are like oases in a desert of tedium. When Zoolander 2 isn't funny, the silliness strains the viewer's patience.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
While all comedies get refined in the editing room, this one feels like it was slapped together there, as Stiller - who also directed - searched for laughs.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"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.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Some movies keep you in a state of suspense. "Zoolander 2," a dud glitter-bomb of a sequel, eventually leaves you in a state of suspended animation, with eyes glazed over and brain in sleep mode.

Name : Bruce Kirkland / Alias : Toronto Sun
An incoherent and idiotic mess.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Stiller and company uphold the Zoolander brand with honor.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
A cavalcade of gags that fall flat and cameo appearances that are more impressive on a look-who-they-got scale than for inspiring any mirth.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Zoolander No. 2 is embarrassing, lazy, and aggressively unfunny. The only good news is that at the pace the franchise is moving, we won't get Zoolander 3 until 2030.

Name : David Rooney / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The imbecilic charms of a character that began as TV sketch material are too often misplaced in this wildly over-plotted, under-energized action comedy, plumped to bursting point with celebrity cameos.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
How bad is Zoolander 2? It's Batman and Robin bad.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Some people find Derek Zoolander funny and likable and endearingly dumb. I don't. I find him grating.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
Amounts to a parade of celebrity cameos masquerading as a movie.

Name : Molly Eichel / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
For every laugh that Zoolander 2 elicits, there's a pang that all this was funnier the first time around.

Name : Nico Lang / Alias : Salon.com
There's no reason the movie had to be this terrible.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Is "Zoolander 2" one "Zoolander" too many? The answer, unfortunately, is yes more than no.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
The orange mocha crappuccino of movie sequels.

Name : David Sims / Alias : The Atlantic
Zoolander 2 takes pains to reference every successful gag you remember from the original, and then embellish them in painful-often offensive, almost always outdated-fashion.

Name : Barry Hertz / Alias : Globe and Mail
It is merely dumb when it should be knowingly dumb; satirically dull when it should be sharp; and just plain ugly when it should be, at the very least, aesthetically minded.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Almost all of "Zoolander 2" is like that draggy last 20 minutes of "SNL," when every half-decent idea has been exhausted and the only reason the show is still going is because there's time to fill up.

Name : Kate Lloyd / Alias : Time Out
As funny, silly and lovingly teasing as anyone could have hoped.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
A mostly agreeable but empty-headed mess. It's sort of the movie equivalent of Derek Zoolander himself.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
Moviegoers may wish that Will Ferrell's megalomaniacal supervillain Mugatu had won in the first Zoolander and saved us from another film with these boneheads.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
Zoolander 2 seems like the result of a 15-year game of "exquisite corpse," the surrealist exercise where different writers add to a story independent of each other, strand by strand, without full knowledge of previous contributions.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Like its title fool, Zoolander 2 wants desperately to be adored, despite coming hopelessly late to the party.

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
"Zoolander 2" has enough plots for several movies. They are so jammed together that they more or less cancel each other out.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
The first film scored a few palpable hits, but the new one barely makes the effort, and the poise of a work like "Funny Face," which both mocked and feted a devotion to couture, seems an impossible dream.

Name : Will Leitch / Alias : The New Republic
It's surprisingly conventional, but not in a reassuring or back-to-basics way; its set ups and jokes are creaky and labored, its characters stock and strait-jacketed.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
It's a bizarre and pointless spectacle, but not an unamusing one.

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : Slate
[Zoolander 2] trades its predecessor's absurdist joys for the same derivative bombast that made Anchorman 2 such a disappointing slog.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Sadly, the promised zings and arrows never fly in "Zoolander 2," which with the exception of a mildly clever opening sequence, steadfastly avoids pointed satire in an attempt simply to cash in, tread water and peace out.

Name : Melissa Anderson / Alias : Village Voice
As my screening companion wisely noted as we left the theater: "The era of the male comedian is over."

Name : Gersh Kuntzman / Alias : New York Daily News
Did you like "Zoolander"? Good, then you'll like "Zoolander 2."

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
This ill-advised repeat resembles unsalvageable messes like "Caddyshack II," "Dumb and Dumber To" and "Blues Brothers 2000."

Name : Jocelyn Noveck / Alias : Associated Press
This sequel ups the ante so relentlessly that you may find yourself pining for a relaxing night of watching the 2001 original.

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
Sticking Derek and Hansel in a world now dominated by smartphones, social media and selfie sticks gave the writers plenty to lampoon, but it's squandered instead on the odd hashtag joke and Netflix plug .

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
When Kiefer Sutherland is the funniest person in your movie, you have a problem.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
The script is so weak that chuckles of recognition become the lion's share of the comedy.

Name : Preston Jones / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
As unnecessary sequels go, Zoolander 2 is relatively painless and generally amusing, and only occasionally strains for its punchlines - the climactic confrontation, in particular, tips from silliness into outright inanity.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
My main problem with these movies is insufferably old-fashioned. With so much digital effects work guiding so many of the action scenes, the simple pleasures of sleight-of-hand are all but lost.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
This longer, louder sequel to 2013's Now You See Me adds up to what one character calls "a sack of nada." You wish the Horsemen would make you disappear.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
The film is an emotional black hole, its insufferably smug tricksters augmented by Mr. Harrelson . as his character's identical twin. They never let us forget that their chief superpowers are glibness and ego.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
No less than in the glossy caper's 2013 predecessor, the plot rides a surging tide of ridiculousness and culminates in a pileup of unconvincing explanations.

Name : Owen Gleiberman / Alias : Variety
A madly spinning top of a movie, powered by an eagerness to please that somehow comes off as more innocent than calculated.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
There's no arguing that there's a clever concept that anchors the "Now You See Me" franchise - expect more sequels - but razzle-dazzle and the art of misdirection can take you only so far.

Name : Dave White / Alias : TheWrap
For their next trick, they make a next trick sound like an attractive prospect.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Now You See Me 2 gets giddy on its own unreality.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Pay no attention to the plot behind the curtain, Now You See Me 2 says, because it barely registers and hardly matters. Just go with it and watch two hours-poof!-disappear.

Name : Lenika Cruz / Alias : The Atlantic
But very little about this hollow sequel to 2013's heist thriller Now You See Me feels mysterious; its biggest set-pieces will make viewers ask not "Whoa, how'd they do that?" but "Wait, huh?"

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
The movie offers neither the astonishment of the magicians' artistry nor a dramatic view of how they do it.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
This is no mere haunted house movie. This is a tour through a giant, spring-loaded funhouse.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
Making a successful sequel is always a little bit like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. But the only magic trick here is how slowly they've made two hours of our lives disappear.

Name : Randy Cordova / Alias : Arizona Republic
"Now You See Me 2" is a sequel that gets it right. It's as if everyone involved here analyzed what worked the first time around in 2013, and then decided to top it.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
What it doesn't have is any kind of real magic.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Just as cheerfully outlandish as the caper flick's precursor, with the acceptance of fancy tricks and misdirection twists dependent on an audience's love of a good hoodwink.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
"Horsemen reappear in London; world holds its breath," blares a newspaper headline in this sequel, rather overestimating the world's fascination with magicians - as well as its recall of the first movie .

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
And of course, there's no danger of mistaking computer-enhanced trickery for actual sleight of hand, so even the modest but honest pleasure provided by quality card work is compromised.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
The film is, at times, almost sinfully fun, assuming you have a taste for self-indulgently logic-free hedonism.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
As the illusions mount, they don't amount to much, leading up to a big finale that piles on the improbabilities and quietly sweeps them under the rug.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Based solely on merit, Now You See Me 2 is a sequel that should never have been made.

Name : Tomris Laffly / Alias : Time Out
Forget what trick-debunker Morgan Freeman says: You don't have to see this to believe it (or see it at all).

Name : Mark Feeney / Alias : Boston Globe
Why make a sequel? Well, why not: This one is more fun.

Name : Mark Daniell / Alias : Toronto Sun
By the time we get to the London-based finale, the illusion the Horsemen pull off comes across as just completely implausible. It's almost as if the filmmakers were saying - didja get all that? Well, too bad.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
It's all about mystery and suspense, deceiving the audience in entertaining ways. It's much more enjoyable than the typical summer sequel du jour.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Try to remember this movie, a few days after seeing it, and you'll find that - like magic - it's disappeared.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Twice as preposterous and half as fun as the original.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
More than once, characters in "Now You See Me 2" make references to pulling back the curtain. And what's behind that curtain is just as much of an incomprehensible jab at the audience as everything else in this film.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
Now You See Me 2 disappears with not a poof, but in a hyper-kinetic blur of hectic plot mechanics, ceaselessly nattering characters and so many ploys of misdirection that the film's own direction got lost up someone's sleeve long ago.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Chu is more craftsman than poet, but the charismatic ensemble cast engages in the trickery with style.