I know I am burning tons of reputational capital just by thinking these thoughts, but I cannot dissemble before my loyal readers. Therefore, without reservation, I must recommend this film and give it five stars. Not that I especially enjoyed watching this film. This wasn't the funniest movie I have seen, (Something About Mary wins that) it wasn't even particularly funny. And it certainly was no intellectual tour-de-force. However, Legally Blonde has a clear purpose, and it executes it flawlessly.

If the characteristics of a movie were specified by a series of dials, every dial for Legally Blonde would be turned to the max. It pushes every aspect to the limits – character, plot, themes – while still staying perfectly in the teenybopper genre, and without breaking through the limits by resorting to annoying obscenity (as in Something About Mary). It does so, so exquisitely, that I must genuflect to its perfection.

But first, some prologue:

With all the great movies this summer, Legally Blonde should have been the one on the top of my "Heck No" list. It is a teenybopper film, filmed with all the skill of a teenybopper film, and starring many of the usual suspects, and not even the attractive ones. Of the wonderfully delicious cast of Cruel Intentions it manages to reunite the two least attractive (at least in my opinion). However, it was the premise that I could not resist.

Malibu Barbie incarnate, Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon), is in her senior year of CULA (California University of LA), when the love of her life, Ken doll with aspirations to the U.S. Senate, Warner (Matthew Davis), dumps her upon receipt of his Harvard Law School acceptance letter. Warner needs a “more serious girlfriend” to make for an appropriate future political wife.

However, homecoming queen and sorority president with a 4.0 GPA (albeit as a fashion major), Elle is no slouch. Determined to prove to Warner that she is serious, she endeavors to get accepted to Harvard as well. Acing her LSAT’s, her video application essay featuring her bodacious bikini clad bod seals the deal. Elle goes to Harvard Law and brings her 90210 sensibilities to the “boring” stuck-up “serious” northeast elite.

When I saw the preview, I was at first heartened because it takes those snobby substanceless Harvard-ites down a peg (my alma mater considers “that school down the road” our most hated rivals, though since Harvard mostly ignores us, it’s more like an inferiority complex than a rivalry).

However, what made this film a must-see was the message. I have a well-educated (liberal arts undergrad, professional graduate school) “so-called enlightened” friend who professes to all the standard liberal causes of tolerance, racial harmony, etc., but was indignant at how her neighborhood is being “ruined” by the influx of Wall St. types (“you know, the bad kind, with girlfriends that care about their appearance!”). She respects me, but was aghast when she learned that I can expound at length on the web of relationships, betrayals and evil twins of ”General Hospital” (at least over a two year period when I was an addict). I still think she is a great person, but she is just symptomatic of the liberal elitism that mouths tolerance, but are in fact highly intolerant toward the likes of mid-western “yokels” or superficial “valley-girls.”

What Legally Blonde does is from the start shows us that, like Clueless’ Cher, there is more to Elle Woods than just her looks. There is a bona-fide brain beneath that bodacious blonde bombshell exterior. And whether she applies that to designing a wardrobe, getting into law school, or getting back her man, she does so with skill, panache and class (Elle-style).

At Harvard, she encounters a coterie of initially hostile fellow first-year law students, all united by their snobbery and over-education, as well as by their archetypeness. There is Enid, a militant lesbian who epitomizes militancy without getting annoying militant. An entirely socially inept nerd genius named David (with Masters in Russian Lit. and a PhD in Biochemistry) whose brooding stammering would stretch credulity if I did not have an acquaintance exactly like him. And Vivian (Cruel Intention’s Selma Blair), the pert and perfect prep school product who has wrangled Warner’s engagement ring.

(Kimberly McCullough makes a very brief appearance as a sorority girl, but I recognized her immediately as Robin Scorpio from “General Hospital” in her first real role since leaving the show a half decade ago)

Once again, the film makes no attempt at verisimilitude (especially the courtroom scene), but instead aims for the limits of exaggeration without buffoonery (ok, the courtroom scene comes close). Though the courtroom sketch artist draws caricatures, the actual characters in the film are not. They are, rather, archetypes. The colors of wardrobe and set follow accordingly. Elle and her California world are filled with exuberant color, color that she takes into the grays, browns and blacks of Harvard and its inhabitants. Her shift from California to Cambridge is a color transition almost as severe as The Wizard of Oz, but in reverse.

The only splash of color in all of Cambridge, MA is in the beauty parlor (an embassy from Elle’s world) where the film takes a delightful diversion to spread the theme that being blonde is not so much a physical attribute, as an attitude, a “bend and a snap” so to speak. Beauty does not have to be found in conventional forms (I write this paragraph for sweetcece in particular).

Otherwise, the direction and cinematography of the film make it look like a standard teenybopper romp (a style revived in the late 90’s from its heydey in the 80’s), a slate of normalcy upon which this parable can be told (I also find it hilarious that the Word spellchecker knows the word, teenybopper). The editing moves briskly and effortlessly as such films are wont to do.

There is little novelty here in terms of themes (“Don’t judge a book by its cover”), but there is novelty in this variant, and skill in the purity of its delivery. In the end, Legally Blonde is a dumb comedy crafted with intelligence and supreme skill. There is something refreshing about the complete lack of guile and subtlety somewhat akin to Camus’ Stranger (ok, so that’s a stretch).

The players here are not obscene caricatures, but instead platonic ideals. They are the figures casting the shadows in Plato's cave in their pure elemental form, perfect but not blinding in their gaudiness. Whereas Moulin Rouge breaks all limits, Legally Blonde respects them, and for that, I must give it its props. Five stars.

Final Grade: A

If you still respect me despite my praise for this film, my predilection for Dawson’s Creek, and my recovering “General Hospital” addiction, then I thank you. That was the point of this movie. Celebrate diversity, even if that includes the hopelessly superficial.

(If I had seen this earlier, this would have been my entry for my Underrated film W/O. And whereas my canonization of Gladiator was partly in jest, here I am dead serious. :)

______________________________
NOTES

Thanks to nylawgirl for her fine review teaching me what the Socratic method is, which was very good prep for watching the movie. Here I will do some of her “self-aggrandizement” for her:
http://benho.epinions.com/educ-review-5E02-10B19255-39C4CA72-prod3

My alma mater:
http://benho.epinions.com/content_18371546756

Guide to Wall St.
http://benho.epinions.com/content_1702600836

Moulin Rouge review (see Footnote 7)
http://benho.epinions.com/content_25688510084

The apotheosis of the film Gladiator
http://benho.epinions.com/content_31873142404


Recommended:
Yes