Main cast: Reese Witherspoon (Elle Woods), Luke Wilson (Emmett Richmond), Selma Blair (Vivian Kensington), Matthew Davis (Warner Huntington III), Victor Garber (Professor Callahan), Jennifer Coolidge (Paulette Bonafonte), Holland Taylor (Professor Stromwell), and Ali Larter (Brooke Taylor-Windham)
Director: Robert Luketic
Not funny. Half-baked. Flaccid. Legally Blonde is all bad dye job and stale jokes.
It’s about this deceptively dumb but not that dumb blonde Elle Woods who is a pro at fashion manufacture. Unfortunately, while she lives to marry her true love Warner Huntington III, he decides to dump her and go to Harvard law school instead. Undeterred, Elle applies for Harvard herself. She hopes that by being a “serious” law student, she will win him back. I still have no idea how she got in, but she did. I think that video of her in that skimpy bikini helped a lot though.
So here goes, Elle’s trials and tribulations in fitting in. Like, you know, she’s not that dumb. Warner has a new girlfriend now, the brunette Vivian Kensington. Unlike blondes who are perky and fun, brunettes are frigid, surly, and bitchy. That’s Vivian, stereotype to the bone. She and Elle end up “best friends”, of course. I hope they will set up a nice house down in San Francisco where Elle can spend her days selling Prada to fashion-conscious gay men while Vivian plays the serious “manly husband” of the house.
But since this is a teen movie where heterosexuality’s the norm, damn the lack of chemistry, Elle falls for the quiet Emmett Richmond, Prof Callahan’s trusty associate. Oh, Elle gets drafted into Callahan’s legal team to handle a murder case. At first I wonder how Elle got in that team too, but alas, to Elle’s dismay, it’s not because of her brains.
But never fear, Elle will soon prove that with the right combination of suspect’s bad hair knowledge and fashion sense, she will be a lawyer to be reckoned with! She may not be able to tell a Latin legal term from Jennifer Lopez‘s latest lawsuit, but heaven have mercy on anyone who shows up in the witness stand with bad perm.
There’s a corny speech by Elle towards the end, telling me that first impression isn’t everything. Okay, Luke Wilson is almost sexy and not as boring as usual in this movie. Victor Garber is hot, and I bet my second impression of him (preferably he sans clothing) will be better. But with Legally Blonde‘s stale jokes, stereotypes, and bad comedy timing, even Reese Witherspoon’s gutsy acting can’t save this movie from being just what it is at first glance. A half-baked Clueless wannabe minus the wit and bite.
