LEGALLY BLONDE A film review by Joshua Tyler Copyright 2001 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 the 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.
RATING: ***
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Robert Luketic Producer: Rick Kidney, Marc E. Platt Writer: Karen Lutz, Kirsten Smith Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Matthew Davis, Selma Blair, Ali Larter, Holland Taylor, Luke Wilson
http://www.mgm.com/legallyblonde/
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