Main cast: Reese Witherspoon (Elle Woods), Sally Field (Rep Victoria Rudd), Regina King (Grace Rossiter), Jennifer Coolidge (Paulette), Bruce McGill (Stanford Marks), Dana Ivey (Congresswoman Libby Hauser), Bob Newhart (Sid Post), and Luke Wilson (Emmett Richmond)
Director: Charles Herman-Wurmfeld
Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blue would have been a great movie if it just focuses on Elle Woods being a bubbly, vapid, but good-natured bimbo with a heart. Unfortunately, this sequel to Legally Blonde tries to pass Elle off as some female Forrest Gump, only its script inadvertently makes Elle anything but smart.
Picking up from the previous movie, Elle the bubbly-headed Harvard law graduate is now marrying law professor Emmett and she has a nice job at a prestigious law firm. But her wedding will not be complete without her chihuahua Bruiser’s mother attending. With the help of a PI, Elle tracks Bruiser’s mother down. Imagine her horror when she learns that Bruiser’s Mom is actually a test subject in a laboratory! She tries to bring this up at her law firm meeting. But even when she is fired, she isn’t giving up. She decides to go to the White House and petition for animal testing to be banned!
Not a bad message at all, but unfortunately, this movie bungles up messily by using unlikely coincidences to prop Elle up instead of letting her prove her mettle. Gee, a core senator happens to the member of her sorority! A doorman knows all the information she needs to campaign (homework – what’s that?)! And the conservative rep? His dog and Bruiser turn out to be gay and in love. While it may be amusing in a way, it’s still a convenient coincidence nonetheless in this movie.
And if that’s not bad enough, the movie ends up being another bitter cat fight movie with the message being you can’t trust your fellow women at all. Empowering? Kiss my bum.
There are maybe one or two good lines, and the use of cheer-leading dancing to win over the required signatures for a bill is inspired. But no matter how pink the movie tries to be, there’s no denying that Elle isn’t smart, not in this movie – she’s just a vapid bimbo who happens to just get lucky. And she dares talk about female empowerment? Can I suggest she go eat her own pink slipper?
Reese Witherspoon is spirited and Luke Wilson, while boring, is also charmingly romantic at the same time. But with this movie all about artifice – pink pink artifice – preaching a feminist message that places too much emphasis on looks and hair curlers, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blue is desperately in need of its own makeover.
