Time: 95 Minutes
Cast:
Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods
Sally Field as Victoria Rudd
Regina King as Grace Rossiter
Jennifer Coolidge as Paulette Bonafonté
Luke Wilson as Emmett Richmond
Director: Charles Herman-Wurmfeld

Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) journeys to Washington, D.C., to have her say about animal rights, but is ignored by every politician she encounters and quickly learns that the White House can be even tougher to navigate than the Ivy League. Finally, Elle makes the acquaintance of sympathetic Rep. Victoria Rudd (Sally Field), who helps the young lawyer get her foot in the door of Congress. Unfortunately, Elle still has to convince the entire legislature to hear her out.

I finally got around to checking out Legally Blonde and I was surprised by how much I liked it. Immediately after watching it, I decided to check out its sequel, Red, White & Blonde. I heard that it wasn’t very good, but I went in open minded. It was worse than the first movie in pretty much every way.

As soon as the movie starts, you notice that it lacks the charm and uplifting feeling of the original movie, and the writing is considerably worse. The plot of the first movie made sense, but is more outlandish here. This less engaging plot boils down to protagonist Elle Woods trying to outlaw animal testing so her dog’s mother can attend her wedding. The first movie is silly and cheesy, but it was fun and I vibed with it. The second movie ramps up the absurdity and goes overboard. Also whereas most of the humour hit in the first movie, it misses in most of its sequel, and even becomes annoying. That being said, at times it gets so silly and absurd that it comes around to being entertaining and funny.

Reese Witherspoon returns to the lead role of Elle Woods and is again the best part of the movie. Unfortunately, her performance is severely affected by the considerably worse writing. It even makes her character come across as stupid, which is already a bad sign considering the previous movie clearly shows that she isn’t that. The rest of the cast including Regina King and Sally Field and returning actors Jennifer Coolidge and Luke Wilson do well in their parts, but they are also affected by the writing.

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde is a massive step down from the first movie, over the top ridiculous, and worse in pretty much every way. However, some subplots and moments are so baffling and random that it occasionally entertains. Perhaps watch it if you like the first movie, but you wouldn’t miss anything if you missed it.