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LEGALLY BLONDE 2: RED, WHITE AND BLONDE As the father of a 12-year-old girl who's a big fan of Legally Blonde, I've seen all or parts of Reese Witherspoon's commercial breakthrough more times than I care to admit. Yet repeat viewings haven't tired me of Witherspoon's vivacious Elle Woods; instead, I've become fond (within stringent critical reason, of course) of both the film and the character at its pink center. Yet it's doubtful that excessive viewings of this sequel will render the same verdict; on the contrary, once is certainly enough. Lazily copying the first film's template to a staggering degree, this excursion finds Elle, now a full-fledged lawyer, hoofing it to Washington, DC, to introduce a bill that would prevent animals from being used as cosmetic test subjects. There, she's taken under the wing of prominent Congresswoman Victoria Rudd (Sally Field), befriended by a hotel doorman (Bob Newhart) who might be the most politically savvy man in town, and forced to lock horns with Rudd's cynical chief of staff (the great Regina King, sadly wasted here). Part of the appeal of the original film was in watching Elle Woods grow from a shallow sorority girl into a self-aware woman genuinely surprised at the breadth of her own potential; here, the character has grown stagnant, and the herky-jerky script relies on recycled gags and pompous speeches to cover up this lamentable fact. There are a few bright spots along the way, but not enough to prevent this from being declared legally bland. 
SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS Despite its frequent reliance on computer graphics, this largely hails from the "old school" of hand-drawn animation, and like most recent efforts in that vein, it proves to be one dull affair. The advent of other modes of toon expression (seen in the eye-popping likes of Shrek, Chicken Run and the current Finding Nemo) doesn't mean that the traditional animated epic should now be treated as the domain of formula fodder -- the recent Spirited Away proved that -- but studios with their hands in the cartoon pot, like Disney, Fox and DreamWorks (which produced Sinbad), seem to be unable to break away from the paralyzing blueprint that rarely wavers from one hand-drawn film to the next. So just as Treasure Planet and The Road to El Dorado have already maintained the status quo of "been there, done that," so too does Sinbad elicit familiar yawns, reactions to its limp storyline about a plucky bad-boy hero (voiced by Brad Pitt) who tirelessly banters with a spunky lady love (Catherine Zeta-Jones) while battling a wicked goddess named Eris (I guess The Little Mermaid's Ursula wasn't available, though listening to Michelle Pfeiffer's purr in the part isn't exactly a chore). There are a pair of nifty sequences that pay tribute to such past fantasy tale spinners as Ray Harryhausen and Jules Verne, but for the most part, this is rough going -- even without the obligatory Bryan Adams tune clogging the soundtrack's arteries.
SPELLBOUND This may sound like so much hyperbole, but in a season packed with reloaded action sequels and superhero sagas, it's shocking to note that the most exciting movie of the summer is actually a modest documentary centering around words. Like Hoop Dreams and many of the other landmark documentaries, this Oscar-nominated gem is only ostensibly about one subject: At first glance, it's merely a piece about eight bright kids who are among the 249 finalists taking part in the 1999 National Spelling Bee. On this level alone, director Jeff Blitz has made a wonderful movie crammed with genuine suspense: Having become familiar with these eight students, we're sweating as each one is confronted with a word that most of us have never heard of before (let alone used), knowing that if they misspell it, they're out of the competition for good. Yet Blitz operates on other plateaus as well, forging subtle yet powerful examinations of the often unrealistic pressures parents place on their offspring, the social stigma among youths of being perceived by their peers as too smart, the ability of this one competition to represent different things to different families depending on their socioeconomic standing, and, especially significant in these pseudo-patriotic times, the real meaning of what it means to reach for that treasured piece of idealism known as the American Dream, blissfully ignoring the conditions that might prevent one's reach and grasp from squarely matching up.
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