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I touched on this topic prior to the release of The Hangover II. Given the overwhelming popularity of that title, this seems like the perfect time to further explore the subject in a new edition of A-List. Which unwanted sequels are not good movies, yet tore up the box office anyway?

In determining the five inclusions, I’ve defined a couple of somewhat arbitrary parameters. They are as follows. My opinion is not the one that matters here. I am selecting movies that are critically reviled and have a score of less than 7 on IMDb, which is basically the equivalent of their “It’s Better Than a Punch to the Face” grade. I am also ignoring any title whose domestic box office is not well beyond its reported production budget. In other words, box office losses and draws are out; wins are the only titles that matter. This rules out Weekend at Bernie’s II, which makes me sad. I also had to exclude The Godfather III, but I will toss you a bit of box office trivia. Without factoring in box office inflation, the critically reviled third outing has earned more than The Godfather Part II. I think you will agree that this is sick and wrong, even worse than the creators of Weekend at Bernie’s pretentiously using II instead of 2 in the title of their sequel.

If a film has a low enough IMDb score, Rotten Tomatoes score and was a box office hit anyway, it made the list. The Rotten Tomatoes portion absolves the Star Wars prequels (and the one with the Ewoks) of consideration in that critics had a shameful blind spot for each one of those monstrosities. Keeping all this in mind, when I started thinking about the Hangover-ish sequels that did well for reasons passing understand in hindsight, here are the titles that pop into my head first.

Legally Blonde 2 - Red, White & Blonde

The first Legally Blonde outing is among the most pleasant surprises of the 2000s. A comedy that looks generic bordering on obnoxious on paper proved to be a joyous celebration of kind hearts and laser focus. Wronged by a cheating man, Elle Woods enrolls in law school like any good stalker would. Over the course of her higher education, she comes to realize she could do a lot better and she even convinces another woman of the same. Legally Blonde was a hit with critics (68% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes) and a box office force, with $96.5 million earned against a paltry $18 million budget.

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde is the blueprint example of a cash-in project just as is the case with The Hangover II. There is absolutely no creativity demonstrated beyond the title in combination with its July 4th weekend release date. That’s it. If you don’t like studio crafted jingoism, all that is left from the sequel that is even marginally memorable is a seduction sequence involving gay dogs. That’s not a joke, by the way. A congressional bill’s fate hangs in the balance as a stodgy Representative attempts to make peace with the fact that his dog is homosexual. You probably had a better idea for a movie during your shower this morning (God, I hope you showered this morning) than anyone involved with this project managed during the entire shoot.

In spite of the lack of, well, effort by the production team, Legally Blonde 2 earned $90.6 million, only a few million less than its predecessor. This is in spite of reviews that border on being angry enough to try to invade Poland. Only 38% of critics gave the movie thumbs up and its IMDb score of 4.3 is low enough to qualify as a Nicolas Cage movie. And this brings us to…

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