Now playing at a buttload of theaters.
More than any other actress, 27-year-old Southerner Reese Witherspoon embodies American ideals at their most... idealistic, representing the beauty, altruistic savvy, and awesomely fine-tuned dental hygiene we so admire in our finest citizens. A former cheerleader/debutante with a Stanford education, Witherspoon is the vision of moral upstandingness--the perfect fusion of Jackie Kennedy and Grace Kelly. Her ancestor John Witherspoon signed the Declaration of Independence. She has even birthed a child and kept her figure.
That's why we believe she can and will change the world through animal rights in Legally Blonde 2, in which Witherspoon reprises her amazing role as Elle Woods, whose desire for truth, justice, and the American way equalizes her unapologetic materialism. Where its surprisingly hilarious precursor was all about Elle struggling to prove her worth and intelligence at Harvard Law School (which she attended to win back her man), part two sees Elle as a successful lawyer taking a personal cause to Washington, D.C., in an effort to change the law.
On the cusp of her marriage to Harvard professor Emmett Richmond (Luke Wilson), Elle hires a private investigator to find the mom of Bruiser, her beloved pet Chihuahua, so she can invite her to the wedding. The PI finds Bruiser's mom... imprisoned at V.E.R.S.A.C.E., a cosmetics animal-testing facility! Acting on her ideals and deep knowledge of beauty products, Elle heads straight to Washington with the sole objective of making animal testing illegal in America.
Naturally, she runs into many foes--those who simply disdain her airheaded perkiness, and a few more nefarious characters with political and monetary motivations. However, being Elle, she makes far more friends (including a right-wing senator, whose gay boy dog falls for Elle's gay boy dog; and Bob Newhart, as a legislation-savvy doorman). By traipsing around Washington in the same suit Jackie O. wore when Kennedy was assassinated, Elle is set on resurrecting an ideal that died alongside JFK: that Washington can and should work for the people, by the people.
While Witherspoon is off saving America, Jennifer Coolidge brings gargantuan hilarity in her far-too-tiny role as ditzy aesthetician Paulette Bonafonté. LB2's final scene alludes to a third film, perhaps the premise of Elle 4 Prez. However, the real America would probably prefer a Paulette Bonafonté spinoff, considering Coolidge is the funniest woman alive today.
