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Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde. Elle Woods played by Reese Witherspoon is a Harvard lawyer who goes to Washington D.C. to change the law on animal testing. She runs into the political system, the U.S. Congress. Lucky for her, she meets a doorman, Sidney played by Bob Newhart, who shows her how the system works to get a bill passed. She writes `The Bruiser Bill’ and puts it in the hopper of Congress. Elle needs 218 signatures to get her bill to be voted on. She gets some unlikely support from several members of Congress she befriends. To get more support, Elle has a Million Dog March on Washington.
Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (also referred to as just Legally Blonde 2) is a 2003 American comedy film directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld and written by Kate Kondell. The sequel to the 2001 film Legally Blonde, the film stars Reese Witherspoon alongside an ensemble cast featuring Sally Field, Regina King, Jennifer Coolidge, Bruce McGill, Dana Ivey, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Bob Newhart, and Luke Wilson, with Coolidge and Wilson reprising their roles from the first film.
Even though the story was set in Washington, D.C., the film was shot in the offices at Vivint Smart Home Arena (then the Delta Center), the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois. The supposed “aerial views” on Washington buildings were scale models built by the crew.
The film hit theaters on the Wednesday before the Fourth of July in 2003 and grossed nearly $40 million by Monday. However, the following weekend the film could only boast sales half of that and the film quickly left theaters in the coming weeks. Grossing about $90 million in the U.S., the film was a success for the studio, though many expected it to perform just as well as Witherspoon’s last big film, Sweet Home Alabama.
A soundtrack for the film was released on July 1, 2003, by Curb Records. “We Can” was released as a single for the soundtrack by American country music recording artist LeAnn Rimes on October 28, 2003, by Curb Records.
Film Review for Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
”Legally Blonde 2: Red White & Blonde,” 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. And old jokes are really what ”Blonde 2” is all about. Reese Witherspoon returns as Elle Woods, the indefatigable sprig of a girl whose disposition is as sunshiny as her hair. Previously she conquered Harvard Law School, a place in need of a new world order, and in the nominal sequel she takes on the moribund legislative branch.
Elle is working as an aide to Representative Rudd (Sally Field), a fellow Delta Nu. Probably the funniest thing in the picture is seeing these Oscar-size forces of nature: Ms. Witherspoon, the most determined actress of the 21st century, is posed, pert nose to nose, with Ms. Field, whose blurted ”You really like me” sentiment disguised a will equally as steely. But the director, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld, and the writer, Kate Kondell, don’t make enough of this matchup.
Instead ”Blonde 2” is repetitive, going over the same material as the first film. The snappy, happy Elle is ridiculed by Rudd’s worldly and world-weary aides, especially the tough, crude Grace (Regina King). So she has to wear them down, win them over yet still find time to get an anti-animal-cruelty bill passed and marry her fiancé, Emmett (Luke Wilson, who’s spending so much time standing behind do-it-themselves superwomen this summer that he seems to be auditioning for the part of Steve Trevor in a future version of ”Wonder Woman”).
There are a few good jokes about tolerance toward gays: Elle’s doggie Bruiser Woods (Moondoggie) comes out of the doghouse, so to speak. Mr. Moondoggie is as expressive this time around as he was in the predecessor and gets his laughs. 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; that we’re apparently suffering the same short-term memory loss that afflicted Guy Pearce in ”Memento.”
After suffering the insults of Rudd’s staff, not to mention running into a few walls trying to use the old-fashioned methods of getting a bill passed, Elle coos, ”I’m gonna do it the Elle Woods way.” This means convening her posse, allowing room for the return of Jennifer Coolidge at her ditziest and rooting around for advantages and inside tracks that are a lot more similar to old-school lobbying than this movie would have us believe. Eventually Elle has to remind those whom she presumed to be on her side of their (blond) roots.
This state of willfulness makes Elle look less than bright, rather than merely shallow, a distinction that was made rather neatly the first time around as well as the neat goof that blondes were a maligned minority. The sequel makes the mild variations on a theme so obvious that this is as much a movie for kids as anything else, despite the hoochy-rific dance number in the Senate that’s meant to galvanize Congress into supporting Elle’s anti-cruelty amendment, which she calls Bruiser’s bill.
Elle is still a bonbon wrapped in pink, but she goes so far into demented variations on that pastel that she seems to be part of a renegade faction of the Mary Kay organization. The costume designer Sophie de Rakoff Carbonell gives Elle one great ensemble — a Bubble-Yum-hued suit and pillbox hat that could’ve been lifted from a Jackie Kennedy photo spread in Look magazine. But this time Elle is crassly stylized instead of stylish; the Elle Woods of the first film would’ve taken her aside to provide a few sisterly fashion tips.
By the end of the movie, when Ms. Witherspoon is winking into the camera, it’s almost like the warning at the end of ”Invasion of the Body Snatchers”: you’re next. 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, a presumption that at least ”Legally Blonde” didn’t make. This time around it feels like pink is last year’s black.
Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003)
Directed by: Charles Herman-Wurmfeld
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Sally Field, Regina King, Jennifer Coolidge, Bruce McGill, Dana Ivey, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Bob Newhart, Luke Wilson, Jessica Cauffiel, Alanna Ubach
Screenplay by: Amanda Brown
Production Design by: Missy Stewart
Cinematography by: Elliot Davis
Film Editing by: Peter Teschner
Costume Design by: Sophie De Rakoff
Set Decoration by: K.C. Fox
Music by: Rolfe Kent, Avril Lavigne
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some sex-related humor.
Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release Date: July 2, 2003
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