Legally Blonde
***1/2
Cinema Releases - October 26, 2001
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12. 96
minutes. Directed by Robert Luketic. Written by Karen McCullah Lutz, Kirsten
Smith; from the novel by Amanda Brown. Starring Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson,
Selma Blair, Matthew Davis, Victor Garber, Ali Larter.
A 'high-concept movie' is one whose premise can
be summed up in one snappy, gimmicky sentence. Sometimes they go horribly,
cheesily wrong, and sometimes they turn out to be the best of studio movies.
"Legally Blonde" is a terrific high-concept movie about a ditzy
blonde who goes to Harvard law school with the aim of winning back her boyfriend
and turns out to have a great legal mind.
Reese Witherspoon stars as Elle Woods, a Fashion
Studies major from California who gets dumped by a hunk named Warner (Matthew
Davis). He's planning on running for office some day, he tells her, and wants
someone a little more 'serious'. "If I'm gonna be a senator by the time I'm
thirty," he tells her, "I need a Jackie, not a Marilyn."
So Elle manages to bluff her way into Harvard
to show this cad what she can achieve, and after a rocky start she's using
common sense to think her way around complex legal problems. There is a moment
in a lecture in which her class are debating a case where a sperm donor tried
to get visitation rights to his child. Elle's response: "If every sperm emission
was considered to have identity, wouldn't every masturbatory act be considered
reckless abandonment?"
The plot works to create a situation in which
first-year law students are enlisted to serve as interns working on a murder
case, and the accused turns out to be Elle's former aerobics coach. In a
strategy meeting, Elle declares, "Exercise gives you endorphins, endorphins
make you happy, and happy people just don't kill their husbands!" And from
then on our heroine manages to use her knowledge of haircare and designer
labels to judge the credibility of witnesses and piece together the truth.
She helps to win the case in a way that's bizarrely amusing, and even more
bizarrely, convincing.
"Legally Blonde" might sound gimmicky, and I suppose
it is, but it has a confident trajectory and a very endearing performance
by Witherspoon, who manages to create a perfect balance of dumb and smart.
There are also lots of wonderful minor moments -- the way Elle gets into
Harvard by recording a video admissions essay from a hot tub; her pink, scented
resumé; her demonstration of the 'bend and flip technique', which
guarantees getting male attention; the way her dog's wardrobe is almost as
big as her own. This is a charming comedy, and one of the year's best
films.
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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