Legally Blondes

As ineffective as direct-to-video sequels come, Legally Blondes follows Annabelle (Camilla Rosso) and Isabelle (Rebecca Rosso) Woods, cousins to Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods, as they move from England to Los Angeles after their father (Christopher Cousins’ Richard) is hired by a local university. The movie subsequently details Annabelle and Isabelle’s efforts at ingratiating themselves among the denizens of their exclusive prep school, although it’s not long before the identical twins find themselves on the bad side of a legendarily snobby fellow student (Brittany Curran’s Tiffany). Legally Blondes has been infused with an exceedingly low-rent vibe that immediately sets it apart from its cinematic predecessors, as the movie’s pervasive lack of style is exacerbated by the aggressive manner with which it’s been geared towards the tween set (ie it’s not difficult to envision the film fitting comfortably into the Disney Channel’s almost unanimously unappealing lineup of original fare). Director Savage Steve Holland proves consistently unable to elevate the hackneyed, hopelessly dumbed-down material, while screenwriters Chad Gomez Creasey and Dara Resnik Creasey’s increasingly desperate attempts at filling screen time translates into a number of hopelessly unfunny comedic set pieces (including a gag lifted directly from the first movie, wherein Isabelle and Annabelle are tricked into dressing inappropriately for a fancy shindig). The Rosso siblings’ personable yet bland work as the central characters essentially exemplifies everything that’s wrong with Legally Blondes, as the movie primarily boasts the feel of a soulless, thoroughly irrelevant piece of work that’s never quite able to justify its very existence.

* out of ****