The scene could be from any number of teen movies. The picked-on heroine is tricked by the villainess into thinking a casual party is a costume ball. The heroine shows up in a pink Playboy bunny outfit, only to find everyone else in plaid shirts and blue jeans.
But while most movies would see the heroine run home in tears to be consoled by her mother, Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) shrugs, smiles and enjoys the party.
“I just thought I’d dress up,” she says.
The scene captures the essence of why “Legally Blonde” succeeds – despite the tired, formulaic plot, the film treats Elle with enough respect to realize that she can handle an embarrassing situation without the help of a parent, or worse, a man. Although most of the characters patronize Elle and assume she’s just a dumb blonde, director Robert Luketic never lets the audience forget that she’s a smart, self-confident woman.
And after creating such a great character, Luketic isn’t about to waste any of the film’s 100 minutes without her. Luketic must have realized he had, at best, a B-movie screenplay, but he had an A-level star attached to it and makes sure that Witherspoon appears in almost every scene of the film. Always easy on the eyes, Witherspoon fills the screen with her persnickety charm and several haute-couture ensembles.
Although the movie suffers when Elle isn’t at the front and center, luckily there’s only one subplot to suffer through. It involves a middle-aged manicurist, Paulette (Jennifer Coolidge), who needs Elle’s help to get back her dog from her deadbeat ex-boyfriend. The low-point of the movie comes when Elle teaches Paulette a sexy maneuver up to entice the man of her dreams. The rest of the women (and at least one man) in the beauty parlor join in and soon we have an absurd choreographed dance scene.
Though not dynamic, the plot moves quickly and offers up plenty of Witherspoon. Elle’s story begins when her boyfriend, Warner Huntington III (Matthew Davis II), dumps her and leaves for Harvard Law School, where he hopes to start his journey toward being a senator by the time he’s 30 years old. Elle, lovelorn and a little bit frazzled that someone could leave her, applies to Harvard Law to win her man back.
But when she arrives, he’s engaged to an East Coast brunette (Selma Blair) who torments Elle in her classes. To make matters worse, Elle is unprepared for her first day of classes and is humiliated by her professors.
Things start to turn around for Elle, and soon she’s one of four exclusive interns at work on a murder trial, in which the defendant happens to be Elle’s former physical trainer.
Throughout the story’s twists and turns, Elle succeeds by her merits. A 4.0 GPA in fashion merchandising, a 179 on her LSAT and an entrance essay/video directed by a member of the Coppola family get her into Harvard. Once there, she hits the books and moves toward the top of the class.
And no matter how much she impresses the Harvard folk, she never turns into a snob – she always manages to stay true to her blonde roots.