Red, white & puke

Legally Blonde 2 may very well make you hate Reese Witherspoon, pink and America.I had a bad time watching Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde. A really bad, pull-the-hair-out-of-your-head, self-massage-the-back-of-your-neck time. The kind of time you’d like to forget via a gallon or two of whiskey followed by a mega nap chaser. But the nightmare doesn’t end until the review is done, so let the beatings begin.

Where to start? How about with the once-promising Reese Witherspoon strengthening the argument that she’s the biggest sellout this side of George Foreman and his freaking burger grills. (At least George’s product is worth something. Those grills rock! He’s still a whore, though.) After strong showings in Freeway, Pleasantville and Election, Witherspoon’s been leaning toward vapid commercial fare over films of substance. Someone stop her, please. Bring her doughnuts or something.

Witherspoon returns as Elle Woods, the fashion-obsessed lawyer who gives sororities a bad name. Toting Bruiser, her scene-stealing Chihuahua, from one silly situation to another, Elle is your typical Hollywood idiot with a big brain under the ditz exterior.

After Elle is fired by her law firm—and she damned well should’ve been because she’s an idiot—she sets out to infiltrate Washington, D.C., and make a mockery of the U.S. government. Elle’s mission: the freeing of animals who are being tested by cosmetic companies. She begins this crusade because a search for Bruiser’s birth mother reveals the pooch’s imprisonment at an animal testing facility. Naturally, Elle wants Bruiser’s mom to be free so she can attend her wedding. Man, I knew it was a stupid plot when I was watching it, but writing it down has blasted home the realization. This is a stupid movie!

Elle heads to Washington where she’s employed by a congresswoman (Sally Field). I’d like to take this moment to congratulate Ms. Field on her stunning transformation over the years from Oscar-worthy actress to worthless hack. As far as career trajectories go, she and former beau Burt Reynolds have a lot in common in that they are both sucking gas.

The film features a whole lotta Elle running around, passing out pink, scented pamphlets to government types, and dealing with Bruiser’s budding sexuality (he’s gay and looks good in studded leather). It’s hard to sympathize with a character as stupid as Elle. Honestly, going to Capitol Hill to change a law so an animal can attend her wedding? Who the hell writes the stuff?

Who cares? This is a sequel that makes you feel like a dick for liking the first film (I kind of liked Legally Blonde, so yes, I’m calling myself a dick). Screenwriter Kate Kondell’s idea of funny is dressing up Elle like Jackie Kennedy on that fateful day when her husband was shot. All I could think about while watching Witherspoon dressed up in pink, pillbox hat in tow, is how Jackie Kennedy wore a similar dress as she attempted to retrieve pieces of JFK’s skull from the back of the limo. Perhaps Kondell meant for this to be subversive, but subversive humor doesn’t belong in a film that boasts Bob Newhart as a resourceful doorman.

The dead Kennedy vibe also had me wishing that Lee Harvey Oswald was somewhere in the back of the theater, his scoped rifle trained at my noggin, ready to put me out of my misery. A bullet to the head would’ve been better than watching Elle’s final "Gosh darn it, let’s love America!" speech. After watching this movie, I hated America, hated pink and, most of all, hated Reese Witherspoon.