Legally Blonde

Snuck into a sneak preview of this last night, and was only mildly surprised to discover that someone finally got around to filming "Clueless Goes To College" albeit under a totally different name.

If you like pink and fuzzy films, check out my review reposted from www.filmcritic.com


You'd have to be legally intoxicated not to realize that Legally Blonde is little more than Clueless goes to college. Yet, unlike most other teen-to-twenties translations, Legally Blonde manages to maintain a certain sense of charm, while casting off any sense of dignity Reese Witherspoon attempts to maintain.

Blonde, as my UA ticket stub so proudly dubbed it, stars Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods, a blonde sorority babe with fashion as a major and cuteness as a minor. But when her boyfriend jumps ship to find a more appropriately intelligent brunette, she sends in a Harvard application and follows him to law school.

In spite of its 1001 Blonde Jokes-inspired name, Legally Blonde is out to prove wrong every dumb blonde crack in the book, sort of. Apparently you can be incredibly intelligent and still be a shallow, fashion-obsessed airhead. But most of all, you have to be pink. And I mean really pink. This film is pinker than the Pink Panther. More pink than a Mary Kay Cadillac. Pinker than even my wife's freaky fuzzy bathroom... but that's another story. Girly color choices aside; Witherspoon portrays the cutest lawyer this critic has ever seen.

But like most comedies you're likely to spot in the local megaplex, Legally Blonde frequently and tragically forgets to be funny. That's not to say there aren't enough jokes; far from it. Rather, most of the jokes tend to turn into "Awww, isn't she cute???" opportunities rather than out-loud, belly-laugh guffaws.

In all fairness, maybe Blonde wasn't really even trying to be funny. Perhaps some wise sage got it into his head that the blonde bimbos of the world have something important to teach us and figured it was high time they tell it, through their own unique brand of fuzzy pink moralism. Or maybe Blonde's writers just lack a legitimate sense of humor. I'll take the latter.

Legally Blonde is a lovely attempt to re-ignite Valley Girl fervor among the now-twentysomething teens who went all gooey over Alicia Silverstone's high-class, high school airhead in Clueless. And while any who venture in to Elle's world are likely to emerge with a smile, one can't help but wonder if the revival of the Valley Girl trend didn't begin and end with Cher.

[Nurvingiel]

Well I just recently watched "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, and Blonde" in which our heroine Elle Woods goes to Washington D.C. to pass a bill banning animal testing in the cosmetics industry. Despite Elle's genius, I have a hard time taking her seriously... for obvious reasons. However, this film has a darker side...

What is the real message of "Legally Blonde"? Let's look at our successful, irrepressible heroine. There are good messages, like you don't have to comprimise your beliefs in order to be successful. But Elle is really only successful due to a combination of factors.

Aside from being an extremely brilliant lawyer, Elle is:
- rich
- good-looking
- has powerful friends

Without the Delta Nus, she never would have passed her bill. She also never would have gotten the key job she did without her DC contact Victoria Rudd. Perhaps these are just handy plot devices, but without knowing it, the film tells us that in order to be successful in American politics, you need to be a rich, good-looking lawyer with a network of powerful friends.

[Starr Polish]

Sounds pretty true to form. With the exception of the good looking part.

[Nurvingiel]

Heh. Yeah... maybe that's just a bonus.

The network of powerful friends though, that is key. It was quite a "Deus ex machina" in the movie (I blame the scriptwriters), but in real life..... I think this holds true to a different degree, depending on where you live in the world.