Reese Witherspoon again stars as Elle Woods in "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde," a 2003 sequel to the highly successful "Legally Blonde." A mistake.

"Legally Blonde" turned the old in crowd/out crowd story on its ear, with a pretty, shallow young woman, Elle Woods, from the "in crowd" who feels inadequate, applies herself, and graduates from Harvard, all the time using her vivacious personality and pink accessories while living in the nerd world. LB 2 starts on a preposterous premise of Elle trying to find her dog Bruiser's mother so that mother and son can attend her wedding. Bruiser's mom turns up as a cosmetics lab, and Elle takes the fight to end animal testing on cosmetics to Washington.

Witherspoon is a wonderful actress and in Elle, creates a great personality, but she can't save this thing. It's great to have a feature film focused on the issue of cosmetics testing in animals, but it hardly matters because of the poor script.

People always say no one starts out to make a bad film. I honestly don't think the idea of a bad film ever comes up. I think it's more honest to say that no one starts out to make a film that they don't think will make money, and hang the script, especially if it's on the coattails of a previous hit.

The first film was surprisingly good, it was funny, fluffy and warm. This sequel was not really any of these things. Apart from a nice soundtrack, one or two amusing moments like the scene at the hearing and a delightfully authentic performance from Reese Witherspoon, this film is a mess. The script is very clichéd and weak, coupled with one too many embarrassing scenes, and the direction is very by-the-numbers. The plot line is very predictable and screams of absurdity and the ending is a joke. The film isn't as striking visually either, and it could be to do with the fact the editing isn't as crisp or the scenery as beautiful. The pacing is rather slow, so I almost nodded off on occasions, and the acting with the exception of Witherspoon is not great. Sally Field is wasted, likewise with Luke Wilson while Jennifer Coolidge's part is overwritten to an embarrassing degree. Also the film is so sugary sweet it almost made my teeth twinge. So overall, disappointing and not recommended. 3/10 Bethany Cox

A big comedown from the first film. You get an inexperienced director out of his depth here who excludes all of the charm and warmth from that movie, leading to a supporting cast of grouchy characters and a dearth of laughs. Witherspoon tries her best but you can tell she's going through the motions here and the plot just doesn't have the meat or the insight to make it sustainable.