Reese Witherspoon plays Elle Woods, a University of Southern California sorority president and homecoming queen who has everything she wants except Warner Huntington III. Then Warner, played by Matthew Davis, leaves for Harvard Law School and drops her, on the stated grounds that he needs a bride more serious than Elle. So she rallies her resources, gets into Harvard, and follows him to win him back.
Trailer, via Amazon MGM Studios.
A Sorority Queen at Harvard
Robert Luketic directs from a script by Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah. The engine is simple: Elle schemes a plan, Elle gets in, Elle arrives somewhere she does not fit. What she finds there is that she is more than the sum of her looks.
Elle Woods, Warner Huntington III, and the Plan
The premise is a joke about a woman rearranging her whole life around a man. Legally Blonde knows this. It plays the absurdity straight, lets Elle be genuinely good at the thing she was never supposed to be good at, and cashes the premise in. The tagline — “Boldly going where no blonde has gone” — tells you the register the marketing wanted.
The Cast Around Witherspoon
The supporting players are doing real work:
- Luke Wilson as Emmetten Richmond
- Selma Blair as Vivian Kensington
- Victor Garber as Professor Callahan
- Jennifer Coolidge as Paulette
- Holland Taylor as Professor Stromwell
- Ali Larter as Brooke Taylor Windham
The Novel Behind the Film
Legally Blonde is also a 2001 comic novel by Amanda Brown, with a copyright credit going to Brigid Kerrigan. Brown based it on her own time at Stanford Law School. The film was based on the novel.
Where the Film Sits
It runs 96 minutes. The novel spawned a franchise: the 2001 film, a 2003 sequel, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde; a 2007 musical; a 2009 direct-to-video film, Legally Blondes; a prequel series, Elle; and a young adult novel series by Natalie Standiford, published in 2006 by Little, Brown and Company.
That is a lot of afterlife for a comedy about a woman following a man to law school.
What Actually Holds Up
Witherspoon is the whole case for the film. Elle could be a punchline and instead she is a person with a plan, and the performance never asks you to laugh at her for wanting what she wants. Coolidge’s Paulette is the other performance that sticks, a small part that lands harder than its screen time.
Why 5.9 Is the Right Number
The problem is that the film is thinner than its reputation. The Harvard material is a set of easy targets, and the movie takes them. For a story about a woman discovering her own capability, too much of the runtime treats that capability as a surprise to everyone but her.
Legally Blonde is likable and it is slight. It has one great idea and one great star, and the goodwill it carries is the franchise’s, not entirely the film’s. The published critical score is 5.9 out of 10, and that reads as fair rather than harsh.
What matters here is Witherspoon, not the premise. The premise is a man’s decision. The performance is Elle’s. That is the part worth keeping.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
