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Legally blonde... |
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Movie Review: Legally blonde
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Matthew Davis, Selma Blair, Ali Larter,
Holland Taylor, Luke Wilson
Director: Robert Luketic
Writer: Karen Lutz,
Kirsten Smith
Producers: Rick Kidney, Marc E. Platt
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When Legally Blonde opens, Elle
(Reese Witherspoon) has just finished a highly successful four years at college, where she
majored in fashion, was president of the Delta Nu sorority, and appeared in a Ricky |
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Martin music video. Now, as she prepares to
enter real life, she is expecting a proposal from her boyfriend, Warner Huntington III
(Matthew Davis). What she gets, instead, is the kiss-off. Warner is headed for Harvard Law
School, and doesn't want to be encumbered by a California girl. He intends to be a U.S.
Senator by the age of 30, and, for that to happen, he needs the "right kind" of
wife, and she's not Elle. Undeterred, our heroine decides to follow Warner to law school,
and, after preparing an unorthodox admission essay |
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and doing surprisingly well on the LSATs,
she is accepted. Once at Harvard, she sets out not only to win |
Warner back from his new, snooty girlfriend,
Vivian (Selma Blair), but to prove that she can become a lawyer.
Legally Blonde combines three plot staples: the triumph over adversity, the romantic
comedy, and the courtroom comedy. The resulting uneven confection is sporadically affable,
but the movie suffers because it never attempts to push the envelope or challenge its
boundaries. The production |
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targets teenagers (girls more than boys) who are content to watch a motion
picture with a few laughs and |
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a happy ending. For every sly or barbed
comment, there are a dozen missed opportunities. Legally Blonde wants so desperately to be
liked by everyone (even lawyers, whom it jokingly calls "people who are boring, ugly,
and serious") that it takes pains to neuter its insults.
For much of the first two-thirds, Legally Blonde remains within the realm of mild |
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satire and lighthearted comedy; however, during the third act,
which involves a court battle where Elle proves her mettle, the film descends into
sentimentality. Suddenly, we're supposed to care not only about the character (which is
feasible, given Witherspoon's performance) but about her circumstances (which is |
not reasonable, given the limited quality of
the writing). Like many comedies, Legally Blonde wants the plot to be more than a
framework upon which to hang the jokes, but it fails to provide enough substance for that
to be the case.
That's a recipe for mediocrity, and, by not taking risks or supplying an interesting
storyline, Legally Blonde falls into the trap. |
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