1632. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003)

Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Sally Field, Regina King

Director: Charles Herman-Wurmfeld

Running Time: 95 mins

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde is an American film and the sequel to Legally Blonde. After discovering that Bruiser’s mother is being kept in animal testing, Elle heads to Washington DC to help pass a bill to ban it.

I’m by no means part of the target audience for the Legally Blonde movies, but that’s no excuse for the films to be as poor as they are. Fortunately not too shrill, the film isn’t a painful watch, but it features such poor comedy from start to finish, worsened by its dumb and inconsistent story, making for an incredibly boring watch.

As much as I didn’t like this film, there are a couple of things that I can look towards positively. Above all, the film doesn’t have any real romance element to it, and so loses what I expected to be the most predictable part of the whole movie, carrying over from the previous film. What’s more is that, whilst it is quite an annoying film if you’re not a 12 year old girl, I was glad to see that Legally Blonde 2 isn’t too shrill. There are some painful moments, but it’s mainly far more dull than it is over the top and irritating, which is somewhat of a good point.

That said, there’s not much else that’s really great about this film. Its biggest problem is the story, which, despite avoiding a generic chick flick romance, is incredibly inconsistent. Yes, you’ve got the central plot about bringing this bill into stop the animal testing, but the ultimate outcome of that plot is completely inevitable from the start.

What the film tries to do is continue the ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ message from the last movie, taking this young blonde woman dressed up like Barbie who is still a (completely unbelievable) law genius. However, this sequel, even more so than the first film, makes it look like Elle is just waving a magic wand with everything she pulls off, not only making her character less convincing and compelling, but also taking away the element of seeing her inner genius, because it’s impossible to get on board with.

Of course, I know this is just a comedy, and I shouldn’t be looking for intense and ingenious character development. But that’s normally only an excuse when the movie is funny enough to forget about serious storytelling. Unfortunately, that’s by no means the case with Legally Blonde 2.

Totally unfunny from start to finish, I was bored out of my mind watching this film, something that always leads to more nitpicking about its worst elements. It’s not just that the comedy here is overly predictable and light, but that it’s just so repetitive. Blonde girl turns up in a room, everybody laughs, then everybody is shocked by how amazing she is. That’s the formula of the story, and the set up for almost every joke. Whilst it may be entertaining if you’ve turned your brain down to -11, it’s just not for anyone else.

Overall, I didn’t like Legally Blonde 2. Whilst it could definitely have been worse and more annoying, the film is an incessantly dull watch. Failing to string together any kind of consistent storytelling, all the while featuring a central plot whose every beat is beyond obvious, there’s very little to care about here, and with its awful quality of comedy, it’s even less enjoyable than a silly chick flick should be, which is why I’m giving it a 5.6.