Legally Blonde

Legally Blonde is a 2001 comedy film starring Reese Witherspoon, produced by Marc E. Platt for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios and directed by Robert Luketic.

The movie, which was seen by many as part of the Girl Power movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s, is based on a book by Amanda Brown about her unpleasant time at Stanford Law School as the spoiled child of a name partner of Brown & Bain.

Although the film's setting is Harvard University, the movie was actually filmed at USC [1] and UCLA; the real Harvard only appears briefly in certain aerial shots.

While Elle is a sister of Delta Nu sorority in the movie, the real sorority Delta Gamma is the sorority mentioned in the book.

A stage musical titled Legally Blonde: The Musical will premiere at the Palace Theatre on Broadway on April 29, 2007, presented by Hal Luftig and Fox Theatricals, producers of the Broadway musical Thoroughly Modern Millie. The score is by Nell Benjamin and Laurence O'Keefe. O'Keefe is the composer/lyricist of Bat Boy: The Musical.

The movie's box office success spawned a 2003 sequel, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde.

This film is number 29 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".

Tagline: This summer, go blonde!

Plot

Legally Blonde is the story of a spoiled rich girl, Elle Woods, who enjoys fast cars, credit cards, and shopping sprees with her friends in Beverly Hills. Her signature color is pink, which is the predominant color of most of her possessions.

The story begins at Cal-U, where Elle is president of her sorority, Delta Nu. Elle has a date with her boyfriend, Warner Hutington, III in which she is expecting him to propose to her. However, instead of proposing it turns out that he is breaking up with her because he claims that if he wants to be in office by the time he's 30 he needs to stop "dicking around" and he needs to marry a "Jackie" instead of a "Marilyn". Elle, outraged, storms out of the restaurant and is confronted by Warner driving his car, while walking home. For fear of messing up her shoes she gets in the car and lets him take her home. After a few weeks that Elle spends moping about in her room, her friends convince her to get manicures and pedicures to cheer her up. While flipping through a magazine, Elle finds a story on Warner's older brother and the Vanderbilt he recently married and decides that she needs to be a law student to get Warner back.

She applies to Harvard Law School (Stanford University in the book) to get Warner back. Elle scores just high enough on the Law School Admissions Test to be accepted to the school, and her unusual application videotape of her in a bikini wins the approval of the admissions board, supposedly, because it would show that they accept a diverse range of students. She brings her pet chihuahua, Bruiser, with her and expects to regain the love of her life at Harvard, but she is met by skepticism of her abilities to understand anything or graduate from the school. Meanwhile, Elle finds out that Warner is engaged to one Vivian Kensington, a former girlfriend from prep school. In a panic, she finds a beauty salon and confides in a new friend Paulette. Paulette is in love with her UPS guy, but too shy to tell him anything.

After showing up to a faux costume party, being the only person in a costume, which she was invited to by Vivian to humiliate her, she finds out that Warner does not think she can handle things either, so she decides to show him that she can. Things do not turn out as easy as Elle believed they would at Harvard Law. Many people are critical of her abilities, and few people take her seriously when she tries to act as a lawyer. However, she manages to find someone who believes in her, Emmett, a graduate of Harvard Law. Eventually, she helps Paulette, a beautician/high school dropout, stand up to her ex-husband and claim her dog back, as well as become one of the top students in her class. One of her professors needs help on a case because his workload is just too much so he unusually takes on four first year students, one of them being Elle, they are assigned to the difficult case of a young woman, Brooke Windham, (a former member of Elle's sorority, Delta Nu and fitness instructor) who is accused of the murder of her older, wealthy husband. She discovers that the one witness who was being used by the prosecutors—the cabana boy, who claimed he was having an affair with Brooke—is actually gay (Given that he is able to correctly identify her shoes as "last season Prada," something that a straight man should know nothing about), and who had been perjuring himself on the stand after being bribed by the real killer.

After the professor and the students talk to Brooke to try to get her alibi, she refuses and Elle goes to visit her disguised as her sister, a Miss Delta Nu. It is only then that Brook tells Elle that her alibi was having liposuction at the time of her husband's death. Ashamed that she needed liposuction and worried that she'll lose her reputation as a very good fitness instructor, she asks that Elle not tell anyone about her secret alibi. Elle complies and is hounded by her fellow student-lawyers and her professor to give them the alibi, however she does not feel that it is her alibi to give and says that if they can't win the case without Brooke's alibi they are not very good lawyers.

During the trial, Elle befriends Warner's fiancée, Vivian, the two of them bonding over Elle's dog. She briefly leaves the case after her professor hits on her—he assigned her to the case because he liked the way she looked—but Emmett convinces her to come back to the case. Vivian, returning to the professor's office for an errand, sees him trying to feel up Elle and assumes that Elle is sleeping with the professor and tells her that if she sleeps with the jury as well she might win them the whole case.

Her professor is fired by Brooke, and Elle takes over with Emmett's help. Using her beauty expertise, she makes the victim's daughter confess to the crime. The daughter claimed to be taking a shower at the time of the murder, but Elle knew that, having had her hair permed that day, the daughter couldn't have showered without deactivating the ammonium thioglycolate and therefore ruining her curls. Elle's reasoning proves her client's innocence and implicates the daughter in accidentally shooting her father while tring to shoot Brooke because she felt that her father shouldn't have married someone who was the same age as her.

Elle graduates at the top of her class with a offer to work at a Boston law firm, Emmett quits his job with the professor and forms his own practice and proposes to Elle after graduation. Warner graduates without honors, has no job offers and loses his fiancée Vivian, who is now Elle's best friend. Paulette gets married to the UPS guy, and it is shown that they are expecting a little girl, who will be named Elle.

Critical and Box Office reception

The movie was well-received by critics, earning "fresh rating" of 67% positive ratings in the rottentomatoes.com compliation of 130 reviews. Positive and negative review alike lauded Reece Witherspoon's lead performance. [2]

The movie was an unexpected hit after grossing over $20 million in its opening weekend and ending its run with over $96 million in the U.S. and more than $141 million worldwide. Many consider this to be Reese Witherspoons breakthrough performance as an actress. It was the movie that made her and A list actress and made her one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood (she would be paid $15 million to star in the sequel). After this movie, Witherspoon had a string of hit movies including the sequel Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde, Sweet Home Alabama and Walk the Line which landed her an oscar for Best Actress

Cast

• Reese Witherspoon – Elle Woods
• Luke Wilson – Emmett Richmond
• Selma Blair – Vivian Thelma Kensington
• Matthew Davis – Warner Huntington III
• Victor Garber – Professor Callahan
• Jennifer Coolidge – Paulette Bonafonté
• Holland Taylor – Professor Stromwell
• Ali Larter – Brooke Taylor Windham
• Jessica Cauffiel – Margot
• Alanna Ubach – Serena
• Oz Perkins – 'Dorky' David Kidney
• Linda Cardellini – Chutney Windham
• Bruce Thomas – UPS Guy
• Meredith Scott Lynn – Enid Wexler
• Raquel Welch – Mrs. Windham Vandermark
• Wayne Federman – Harvard Admissions Counselor

Music

• "Perfect Day" by Hoku is the theme and opening title music.

Footnotes

External links

• Official Site of the Legally Blonde Musical
• Legally Blonde at the Internet Movie Database

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Legally Blonde".