You may forget everything in this movie two minutes after watching it, but it’s easy to take along the way.
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Did you hear about the blonde who took a ruler to bed to see how long she slept? Or the blonde who thought a quarterback was a refund? Or the blonde who sold her car for gas money? Or the blonde who spent twenty minutes looking at the orange juice can because it said "concentrate"? You get the point. The dumb blonde stereotype is unfairly ingrained in our society, and the question is whether "Legally Blonde," the 2001 college comedy with Reese Witherspoon, lays to rest the blonde bias or manages to perpetuate it in spite of itself. I tend to favor the former view, but it´s something audiences will be called upon to decide for themselves.
They say laughter is the best medicine. My wife saw this movie in a theater without me. She went off with a couple of lady friends after work, and when she got home she said it was the perfect film for relieving the stress of the office. She´d had a headache all day, it seems, and watching a totally lightweight but nonetheless entertaining piece of fluff that didn´t require her to think much was just the cure. She´d never felt so relaxed after a film in all her life. We watched it together on DVD, and I could understand what she meant. "Legally Blonde" is a modern fairy-tale fantasy about clichéd images and, better, a film that never takes itself, its characters, or its messages too seriously. Even so, the film makes a few good points about how we view ourselves, our world, and those around us. You may forget everything in this movie two minutes after watching it, but it´s easy to take along the way.
Witherspoon is letter perfect as Elle Woods, a Southern California college student with everything a young woman could want in life: Rich parents, a handsome boyfriend, loads of girl friends, rooms full of clothes and accessories, a Porsche Boxster, a designer computer, and blond hair. But her boyfriend, Warner Huntington III (Matthew Davis), is going off to Harvard Law School and leaving her behind. He has ambitions of going into politics and needs an appropriately intellectual wife to help him along, not a ditsy blonde. In desperation, she decides to win him back by enrolling in Harvard Law herself. The fact that she´s just earned her BA degree in Fashion Design doesn´t deter her. And, thus, we have a film about a fish out of water--the vivacious, upscale Valley Girl in what she considers the land of the socially dead. Her character is not unlike the one she played in "Pleasantville," but older; nor is the new situation she finds herself in much different. It´s an uphill climb, but she´s determined to succeed no matter how out of place she appears.
You see, Elle´s taste may incline to pinks and parties, but she actually has a brain. She is an exaggeration of the dumb blonde chestnut, only the "dumb" is merely the result of her environment and upbringing. Both her parents and her boyfriend assure her she is not smart enough to go to Harvard Law. Her first smart move is to ignore them. To the amazement of everyone, she gets accepted to the school based on her high entrance test scores and straight A´s in her former major. She finds Harvard stuffy, but she learns to fit in, which isn´t easy considering that she´s described as a "walking Victoria´s Secret model." Two girls in particular are mean to her. They invite Elle to a party and tell her to dress in costume, but it´s not a costume party. When she arrives dressed as a Playboy Bunny, Elle takes it in stride; rather than standing out, she makes the best of the situation and ultimately appears to be the only one there having any fun.
The film revels in the idea of a person learning to stand up for herself and speaking her mind. When Elle begins actually to study, she finds she has more going for herself than her money and appearance. Along the way, her hair styles change (about forty times), her clothing colors change (from pink to conservative gray and back), and her boyfriend changes from dimwitted Warner to Mr. Nice Guy, Emmett Richmond (Luke Wilson). But when she´s selected to help represent a woman accused of murder, the film takes a final turn that requires a giant leap of faith on the part of the audience. The trial is sillier than anything else in this world of make-believe, but the movie´s point is made clear, nonetheless: We can be anything we set our minds to be.
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