What does a blonde do after her boyfriend dumps her? She, like, totally goes to Harvard. And then, like, wins a high-profile murder case. Oh, and gets a manicure. Duh!
In Legally Blonde, Reese Witherspoon plays a perfectly coifed Elle Woods, a fashion merchandising major from Bel Air, who is prepared to accept her boyfriend's six-carat Harry Winston engagement ring. Except, instead of asking her to marry him, Warner (Matthew Davis) breaks it off. And he adds insult to injury by letting her know that if he is to be a successful lawyer and politician, he needs a Jackie and Elle is just too Marilyn.
Well, that sends Elle on a mission to prove that she can be blonde and brainy. So she skips the rest of her senior parties with her Delta Nu sisters to study her pink little petunia off for the LSATs, hires a Coppola to direct her video admissions essay (in which she films wearing a sequined bikini) and parlays her fashion 4.0 into Harvard Law.
Upon her East Coast arrival, Elle finds that her pink little petunia (and all the rest of her pink regalia) isn't welcome among the country club set. She gets an especially cold reception from Vivian Kensington (Selma Blair), the seriously not-blonde woman who is sporting Warner's rock. All three of them end up working as interns for their professor--supposedly Boston's best defense attorney--to prove another blonde's innocence of her much older husband's murder.
It's no secret that this movie's plot has been seen before. It's Clueless Goes to College meets My Cousin Vinny in Pink (seriously, the color is ubiquitous). Only the script penned by Karen Lutz and Kristen Smith is not half as clever as either of those. As in Clueless, Elle finds an intelligent older man (Luke Wilson) to replace her shallow ex. But this love story is treated as a matter-of-course plot convention and is left undeveloped.
It is rare to see a supporting cast as entirely superfluous and forgettable as this one is. There are plenty of laughs in Legally Blonde, but these are all earned by the adorable Witherspoon. Lucky for this movie, she is able to shine through the trite "never judge a book by its flaxen-haired cover" message and be the only thing that keeps this much pink from causing a severe case of vertigo.
