MISS Woods goes to Washington to give them Elle in that particularly pink and perky way of hers but like lipstick, the gloss wears off all too quickly.

Reese Witherspoon got lucky with the unexpected success of the fluffy but fun Legally Blonde in 2001, but as so often happens, when you try to fathom the magic, the magic stops working.

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White And Blonde - different director, different city, same one-note joke and no new jokes - tries too hard and there is nothing less funny in comedy than desperation. Then again, cynical rehashing comes a close second.

Elle Woods (Witherspoon) is the candy-floss sorority girl who swept through Harvard Law School in her Jackie Onassis suits after being dumped by her Ivy League boyfriend. Fresh from her court-case triumph at the finale to Legally Blonde, designer-label devotee Elle is planning her perfect wedding to her perfect fianc (Luke Wilson) when Washington's political world calls.

Elle is to petition Congress against animal testing after discovering that the mother of her designer-clad chihuahua, Bruiser, is being used in cosmetic experiments.

"Capitol Barbie" sneer her new work colleagues as they make the same mistake as everyone did in her student days in Legally Blonde, assuming that someone so blonde, so pink, so chirpy, must be dumb. We know different, of course, and so the joke is no longer funny.

Where Robert Luketic's Legally Blonde was a likeable compound of charm and silly froth, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld's sequel is too smug and too facile in its digs at stuffy, grey Washington suits.

Reese Witherspoon is far too good for this predictable cheese, even rising above Bruiser the dog being given the best gags to affirm her status as America's best young comic actress. She's in the pink, even if the movie isn't.

Updated: 09:25 Friday, August 01, 2003