LEGALLY BLONDE 2: RED, WHITE & BLONDE

Hotshot Harvard Law School grad Elle Woods puts her wedding plans on hold in order to take her battle with powerful violators of animal rights to the floor of Congress.

CAST: Reese Witherspoon, Sally Field, Bob Newhart, Luke Wilson, Jennifer Coolidge, Regina King, Alanna Ubach

DIRECTOR: Charles Herman-Wurmfeld

"Stupidity and banality reign supreme in ‘Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde,’ the sequel to the 2001 smash about a Bel-Air blonde who found her brain at Harvard Law School. Not since ‘Rocky II’ has there been a more blatant attempt to recapitulate a box-office hit without adding any new attraction or appeal… it feels less like a sequel, or even a remake, than a repeat…Like a worn-out comic hanging on to previous success, Witherspoon's Woods goes through the same old motions." --Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun

"The jokes are limp, the ideas stale, the script is well past its freshness date; were it a platter of crudites, Elle would fire the caterers. Instead, she must slog through it, like a river of instant onion dip…‘LB2’ was inevitable, one presumes, but you really wish the actress would get an agent who could cull good material from bad…You cannot sympathize with someone whose basic motivation is having canine attendants at her wedding." --John Anderson, Newsday

"‘Legally Blonde 2’ moves at such a brisk, easy clip that there isn't much time to linger over its flaws…Although the film's politics are more inspiring than a flock of gun-toting Angels, they never get in the way of its silliness…Witherspoon — whose production company is called Type A Films and who served as executive producer on ‘Legally Blonde 2’ — isn't exactly Gloria Steinem, but not since Cyndi Lauper has a major pop figure projected such a blissfully happy, self-amused view toward being female. Elle knows you can have your Jimmy Choos and your equal paycheck too." --Manohla Dargis, The Los Angeles Times

"The sequel to 2001's ‘Legally Blonde’ is a movie for people who somehow managed to miss the point of the first picture, itself the kind of material that put the ‘b’ in subtle, as the old joke goes…The movie assumes not only that Elle did not learn anything from the first movie, but that its lessons of perseverance and open-mindedness were lost on the audience, too…The makers of this movie, like those behind the recent ‘Down With Love,’ seem to be out to make a picture that's all external gestures and flourishes. These frosted vanilla Pop-Tarts are all context and no subtext." --Elvis Mitchell, The New York Times

"This sequel to the likeably brain-dead 2001 film is not funny. The best joke -- the absolute best the filmmakers could come up with -- is about gay dogs, which quickly degenerates into offensive gay stereotypes…the filmmaking lacks any kind of competence. It relies on lazy short cuts, coincidences and complete suspension of anything remotely resembling reality…Reese Witherspoon had enough charisma to sell the original ‘Legally Blonde’ to some extent, but here she simply goes through the motions…yes, ‘Legally Blonde 2’ is even worse than ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’" -- Jeffrey M. Anderson, The San Francisco Examiner

"There are some funny bits here, including a running joke about homosexual dogs that seems to have been swiped from ‘South Park’ just in time to greet last week's Supreme Court ruling overturning sodomy laws. But the character of Elle Woods is a one-note joke that depends on frequent iterations of skin-care regimens and cosmetic do's and don'ts. It's like being strapped down and forced to read back issues of Lucky magazine…We love Reese Witherspoon. Who could not?…Still, this movie depends on the premise that all of us prefer ‘warm fuzzies,’ when actually we miss the malevolence that shone through like an oil blot in the T-zone of Witherspoon's scheming character in ‘Election.’" --Jami Bernard, The New York Daily News

‘Legally Blonde 2’ is a movie of many stupid pet tricks and one basic joke: As in the original, Elle's intelligence is consistently—if understandably—underestimated. (Actually there is another, quite funny, riff that concerns Bruiser's sexual orientation)…the latest ‘Legally Blonde’ seems less a spoof on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton than the game plan for Senator John Edwards, known to the Bushies as the ‘Breck Girl.’" --J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

"Elle, for whom pink is not a favorite color but a lifestyle choice, is like a walking, talking beauty and cosmetics magazine, whose obsession with superficial girly things causes people, understandably, to dismiss her at first sight…the myth of a populist Congress will live on, apart from the real world of lobbyists, log-rolling, punishment to the disloyal and favors for friends. In the real world, Elle Woods would be chewed up faster than one of little Bruiser's Milk-Bones." --Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"Apart from the bubbly blonde in the bubblegum-pink pillbox hat and matching sheath, this sequel to the surprise hit is as resistible as a filibuster, as frustrating as a puff of cotton candy that dissolves too quickly on the tongue…unless Witherspoon or Field is delivering a witticism, the movie withers quicker than cut snapdragons. Pink, of course." --Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer