Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, Rachel Welch
Director: Robert Luketi
Rated: PG
THIS teen film is built on the sexist premise that women with natural or acquired blonde hair are dim-witted.
The first third of Legally Blonde builds the case for the prosecution and the rest of the film is the case for the defence.
Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) is a wealthy, but apparently dumb blonde, interested in fashion, fads and anything trendy.
Runner-up in the Miss Hawaiian Tropic Contest, Elle is the caricature of the Californian bimbo. Her degree is in ‘fashion marketing’.
She is in love with Warner (Matthew Davis), a handsome lad from a wealthy east coast family.
He is destined for Harvard Law School and a Senate seat. Elle is his summer flirtation. Warner is the love of Elle’s life. She expects marriage. He calls the relationship off.
The only way to hold on to Warner is to go to Harvard as well. With a little help from her friends and to everyone’s surprise, Elle makes the grade.
The journey from the west to the east coast is more than geographical. Elle discovers gifts and experiences that mark her out as a potentially talented lawyer and an independent woman.
Legally Blonde could be seen as the United States’ version of Bridget Jones’s Diary. It is equally as crude and coarse in parts and so may offend some viewers, but the script in this film is not nearly as good as its British cousin and the set-ups and sight gags are rather well worn. Legally Blonde has huge gaps in the story, including what the upper-class Warner is doing at Elle’s flaky Californian College in the first place.
What saves this apparently slight film from being embarrassing is that it does not take itself very seriously and is a parody on a society that likes to think of itself as egalitarian.
Elle challenges the born-to-rule and gendered assumptions, both geographical and educational, by simply being herself.
What’s most disquieting about this attack on our so-called classless society is that we smile all the way to the end of it.
