In this funny and intriguing movie it tells the story of a determined woman, Elle Woods. This 96 minute 2001 American comedy film titled “Legally Blonde” is written by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirtsen Smith and directed by Robert Luketic. In Los Angeles, California, young preppy rich girly-girl Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) is the president of her sorority. She is your typical bubbly girl with a blonde girl personality and she is obsessed with anything fashion or pink. Her boyfriend Warner Huntington III (Matthew Davis) takes her on a date and she suspects he is going to ask her to marry him, but little did she know he instead broke up with her. His reasoning was because he wanted to be a senator and lead a serious life and he believed Elle wasn’t serious enough for that type of lifestyle, saying she’s “too blond”. Despite her sorority pink girly lifestyle, she thinks she can be serious enough for that life so she takes the challenge and decides to try and get into Harvard Law School just like Warner only so he can choose to be with her after all. After studying hard and getting a good score on the admission test, she gets in. She changes her clothing style of wearing all pink girly-girl clothes to wearing boring basic colors to fit in with the rest of the population at Harvard. After attending for a while she realizes she is nothing like her classmates at Harvard due to the personality difference and that she needs to step it up if she wants to impress Warner and be his true love. It shows the theme of overcoming the blonde girl stereotypes since Elle becomes a successful lawyer. As this film goes on many other plots go on while Elle attends Harvard such as figuring out a big case, but saying any further would be spoiling the whole film so you have to watch to find out!
This film also stars other actors and actresses such as Jennifer Coolidge, Holland Taylor, Luke Wilson, Ali Larter, and many more! “Legally Blonde” is originally a book written by Amanda Brown based upon her real life experiences of attending Stanford Law School. Just like Elle in the movie, Amanda loved fashion and everything girly so attending a serious law school created a lot of clashing with other classmates and it opened her into a world of serious people. She explains her experience as seeing all these “angry” people because none of them had real true personalities like she did which created a big difference. After attending the law school, she decided to write a manuscript of her experiences and turned it into a book as she passed it around but no agent took notice of it until she made the cover pink, which caught one’s attention. The writers I mentioned before, Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, did some research and sat in on how Stanford’s school goes on about their days so they could get proper research for the film they were planning to make based on Brown’s experiences. Although in the film Elle’s signature color is pink, while in the process of costuming designing, designer Sophie De Rakoff and Reese Witherspoon, who plays Elle, explored other colors first. While in shops trying to find a perfect fit, they considered colors like blue or purple but after seeing how sorority girls dressed and acted, pink was definitely the best decision. I couldn’t even imagine watching the film and seeing Elle’s character wearing a color like blue, it just wouldn’t be very fitting.
The director, Luketic, was very unfamiliar with filming such a big movie like this but after seeing Amanda Brown’s manuscript he knew the challenge needed to be taken. “Legally Blonde” is one of his very first real movies he directed besides small short films such as his small 12 minute films from earlier before. Luketic revealed he was quite anxious about being in charge of directing “Legally Blonde” not just because it was his first ever real movie, but because there were so many famous actors and actresses and overall so many people in general. Besides the original 2001 film, there is another called “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, and Blonde” that came out in 2003 starring mainly all the same main actors and actresses from the original one as well as some new ones. Personally, I like the first one better because it is intriguing to see how Elle develops from being a preppy pink sorority girl to becoming a successful law student trying to navigate a new environment. It shows the development of how she only joined law school to win her ex-boyfriend’s love back and appeal to him, to then actually liking being in the law school and being very successful with a case.
I really enjoyed watching this film because I loved the acting, the setting, the development, so basically everything. The film isn’t really a mature film so it may not be the most intriguing to watch if you’re an older person, and if you’re a boy it may be boring to you because it’s more of a girl comedy film, but you never know! It’s the perfect film for tweens or teenagers because it shows how Elle is a good role model and develops with herself throughout the film. It is definitely a lighthearted fun movie to watch and it’s not boring at all, in my opinion. I give this movie a 5 out of 5 stars because I love how Reese Witherspoon portrayed her character and how she went from being so upset about the breakup, to then using it as an excuse to start something new which will lead her into a good and productive life rather than the sorority girl life-style. I also love the backstory of how it came to play because Amanda Brown’s experiences of going to Stanford Law as someone like Elle is really interesting to think that this movie was actually inspired by a real story. I definitely recommend this movie because you might enjoy it!