Ace Weekly

Recognizing that there's nothing more patriotic than rampant materialism, cultural ignorance, fast fashion, a steadfast lack of imagination, and disturbing dog-love, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld's Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde is essentially a blow-by-blow remake of the first film with a different setting and more Chihuahua. It tackles animal rights and congressional corruption with the same seriousness as Versace vs. Gucci, hoping against hope that Reese Witherspoon's considerable charm will smooth over the clumsy grafts and inevitable tissue rejection of a film with speaking roles for Jennifer Coolidge, Bob Newhart, and Sally Field. Harvard Law is replaced by the Beltway Boys, factoids about perms are replaced by factoids about facials, and it all boils down to the importance of sorority sisters-particularly ironic in a movie so horrified by the evils of intractable nepotism amongst insular societies.

Elle (Witherspoon) is a perky be-pinked Harvard Law grad who, after getting sort of smart in the first film, is dumb all over again so that she might learn the same lessons she's already learned, thus relieving screenwriter (Kate Kondell) and director from the strain of coming up with a script about a woman who starts smart and stays that way. Seems easier to continuously reproduce the same movie so as to satisfy investors and filmgoers while observing a gentleman's agreement not to surprise one another.

The picture's invitation is to not only identify with the scoffing elite (who recognize Elle's naivete as shallow and offensive) but also with Elle, and her secret superhero identity of "Smart Girl."

Legally Blonde 2, at its heart, is a bully comeuppance fantasy that, coupled with Ang Lee's The Hulk, provides a reassuringly complementary revenge fantasy couplet this summer for the intellectually and physically inferior.

Oddly enough, both films invite us first to poke fun at the hero's inadequacy before reveling in said hero's triumph: self-hatred and easy hypocrisy as two paths towards the new millennium's spiritual emancipation.

The jokes are facile and obvious: vacillating between sight gags, caste misunderstandings, and the implicit hilarity of homosexual Mexican dogs.

A mid-film reference to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington seeks to explain/forgive Elle's status of babe in the political woods-but the naïf mantle is particularly ill-fitting in the decades post-Watergate. What's so enchanting about the idea, in other words, of a woman who doesn't use her sexuality for power (see, however misguidedly, Charlie's Angels 2), but plays instead on the cruelest stereotypes of her gender (ditzy, materialistic, over-emotional)-stereotypes that, in Elle's case, appear to mostly be true. Fascinatingly, with Field recast in the Claude Rains role (from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), and Newhart in for Jean Arthur, Legally Blonde 2 is a curious sort of gender bender that at once mistakes a woman in a man's role for feminism, and provides straight-faced fodder for Witherspoon's own satirical Election.

The idea that Elle is this generation's Norma Rae (a suggestion made by the casting of Field as Elle's mentor in Washington) gains a disturbing heft when considering that rather than offering a young oppressed woman with ideals motivated by a genuine concern for the fate of her family, Legally Blonde 2 offers a young wealthy woman obsessed with her wardrobe and the well-being of her deadpan dog's family.

The relative fecklessness of the message married with the cavalier parsing of gender politics results in a film cheerfully insulting to both women (ice queens or morons), and men (demagogues or milquetoasts-particularly Luke Wilson's trademark boyfriend character that scores Wilson the title of 2003's honorary "John C. Reilly"). It's all reductive posturing here, freed of the bathetic self-awareness of the great burlesque artists (Charlie Chaplin, Jerry Lewis), that leaves the only character with which we can identify that fantasy of this magnificent dimwit, tilting at intellectual windmills and looking fabulous.

FILM Dumb Blonde Sequel silliness By Walter Chaw "I'm blonde, I'm dumb. Get used to it." Recognizing that there's nothing more patriotic than rampant materialism, cultural ignorance, fast fashion, a steadfast lack of imagination, and disturbing dog-love, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld's Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde is essentially a blow-by-blow remake of the first film with a different setting and more Chihuahua. It tackles animal rights and congressional corruption with the same seriousness as Versace vs. Gucci, hoping against hope that Reese Witherspoon's considerable charm will smooth over the clumsy grafts and inevitable tissue rejection of a film with speaking roles for Jennifer Coolidge, Bob Newhart, and Sally Field. Harvard Law is replaced by the Beltway Boys, factoids about perms are replaced by factoids about facials, and it all boils down to the importance of sorority sisters-particularly ironic in a movie so horrified by the evils of intractable nepotism amongst insular societies. Elle (Witherspoon) is a perky be-pinked Harvard Law grad who, after getting sort of smart in the first film, is dumb all over again so that she might learn the same lessons she's already learned, thus relieving screenwriter (Kate Kondell) and director from the strain of coming up with a script about a woman who starts smart and stays that way. Seems easier to continuously reproduce the same movie so as to satisfy investors and filmgoers while observing a gentleman's agreement not to surprise one another. The picture's invitation is to not only identify with the scoffing elite (who recognize Elle's naivete as shallow and offensive) but also with Elle, and her secret superhero identity of "Smart Girl." Legally Blonde 2, at its heart, is a bully comeuppance fantasy that, coupled with Ang Lee's The Hulk, provides a reassuringly complementary revenge fantasy couplet this summer for the intellectually and physically inferior. Oddly enough, both films invite us first to poke fun at the hero's inadequacy before reveling in said hero's triumph: self-hatred and easy hypocrisy as two paths towards the new millennium's spiritual emancipation. The jokes are facile and obvious: vacillating between sight gags, caste misunderstandings, and the implicit hilarity of homosexual Mexican dogs. A mid-film reference to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington seeks to explain/forgive Elle's status of babe in the political woods-but the naïf mantle is particularly ill-fitting in the decades post-Watergate. What's so enchanting about the idea, in other words, of a woman who doesn't use her sexuality for power (see, however misguidedly, Charlie's Angels 2), but plays instead on the cruelest stereotypes of her gender (ditzy, materialistic, over-emotional)-stereotypes that, in Elle's case, appear to mostly be true. Fascinatingly, with Field recast in the Claude Rains role (from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), and Newhart in for Jean Arthur, Legally Blonde 2 is a curious sort of gender bender that at once mistakes a woman in a man's role for feminism, and provides straight-faced fodder for Witherspoon's own satirical Election. The idea that Elle is this generation's Norma Rae (a suggestion made by the casting of Field as Elle's mentor in Washington) gains a disturbing heft when considering that rather than offering a young oppressed woman with ideals motivated by a genuine concern for the fate of her family, Legally Blonde 2 offers a young wealthy woman obsessed with her wardrobe and the well-being of her deadpan dog's family. The relative fecklessness of the message married with the cavalier parsing of gender politics results in a film cheerfully insulting to both women (ice queens or morons), and men (demagogues or milquetoasts-particularly Luke Wilson's trademark boyfriend character that scores Wilson the title of 2003's honorary "John C. Reilly"). It's all reductive posturing here, freed of the bathetic self-awareness of the great burlesque artists (Charlie Chaplin, Jerry Lewis), that leaves the only character with which we can identify that fantasy of this magnificent dimwit, tilting at intellectual windmills and looking fabulous.

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