Buoyant Witherspoon lifts a wilting ‘Legally Blonde 2’

In theaters

LEGALLY BLONDE 2: RED, WHITE AND BLONDE, directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfield, written by Eve Ahlert, Dennis Drake and Kate Kondell, 94 minutes, rated PG-13.

There’s a scene in “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde” when Jimmy Stewart, furious at the sorry state of affairs in Washington, delivers a speech to Congress that proves that one impassioned voice, when raised against the most malignant of forces, can be enough to promote change.

Of course, the scene is from “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and it’s featured in the film on a hotel television set. Still, thanks to Stewart, the direction “Legally Blonde 2” takes is made early on: This time out, Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon), that pink puff of papri-ika from Bel-Air, is going to use her Harvard Law degree to morph into Capitol Barbie and promote her own sort of change in D.C..

With the encouragement of her fiance, Emmett (Luke Wilson), the help of Congresswoman Rudd (Sally Field) and the reluctant support of Rudd’s glum team of young climbers, who have their own agendas, Elle plans to pass a bill that will prohibit cosmetic companies such as V.E.R.S.A.C.E. from using laboratory testing on animals.

Since Elle is the sort of woman who makes newborn babies look as if they’ve lived full, complicated lives, she believes this will be a snap. After all, Elle taught her Chihuahua, Bruiser, how to shop online. Certainly she can handle Congress.

But how will Congress handle her? And when they do, will they be any match for someone who is the very personification of pure cane sugar as grown by the folks at Bergdorf Goodman?

The first “Legally Blonde” didn’t have the wit of its inspiration, Amy Heckerling’s “Clueless,” nor the bite of Witherspoon’s best film, “Election,” but it did have energy, a few big laughs, clever writing and loads of style.

This time out, sustaining that energy is, like, a major pain for director Charles Herman-Wurmfield, a man best known for directing that “Facts of Life” reunion movie. It doesn’t help that the biggest laughs have been squandered in the film’s trailer and television ads, or that much of the rest of the script, as written by Eve Ahlert, Dennis Drake and Kate Kondell, seems like yesterday’s throwaways.

Lucky for Wurmfield that he has Witherspoon and her indefatigable spunk; she makes the film diverting and buoyant even when it feels all so two years ago. Also lifting the proceedings are Bob Newhart as a well-connected doorman and Jennifer Coolidge as Elle’s faithful beauty operator friend, Paulette Parcelle, a gushy squeeze with a penchant for hot dogs who joins Elle’s Delta Nu gal-pals in proving that beauty, when used properly, apparently connects everything.

Grade: C+

On video and DVD

BASIC, directed by John McTiernan, written by James Vanderbilt, 95 minutes, rated R.

When John McTiernan’s new military thriller, “Basic,” hit theaters in March, it was touted for all its countless twists and turns, which likely drew some to theaters to see it but which, by its midpoint, drove others away, as was the case at my screening.

Across the board, the performances are engaging and the film has energy to spare, but it tries too hard to be something it isn’t – a smart, crafty little thriller that rolls out the revelations as if it were a cross between “The Usual Suspects,” “Rashomon” and “The General’s Daughter” as directed by John Woo after taking one heady snort of glue.

In the film, a newly chiseled, unusually youthful-looking John Travolta stars as Tom Hardy, a boozy DEA agent and former Army Ranger enlisted by Col. Bill Styles (Tim Daly) to join provost marshal Julia Osborne (Connie Nielsen) in uncovering the truth of what went wrong during a botched mission in Panama – the one in which a psychotic Special Forces sergeant named West (Samuel L. Jackson) was murdered with a grenade to the back.

Two survivors (Giovanni Ribisi and Brian Van Holt) know the truth of what happened, but they have their own accounts, neither of which, in the end, really matters since the film is such an absolute cheat. It doesn’t play fair with the audience, tricking them with twists and turns that have little to do with anything in an all-out effort to create an ending that stuns.

McTiernan pulls that off, but he doesn’t do so in a way that anyone can admire or respect.

Instead, his ending, complicated by an 11th-hour drug conspiracy, literally comes out of nowhere and left some at my screening talking back to the screen.

Since this is a family paper, I can’t share their heart-felt sentiments, so we’ll leave it at this: Imagine calling your movie

“Basic” and instead coming away with “Pathetic.”

Grade: D

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.