Blondes
may have more fun, but are they taken seriously? The question
forms the premise of Legally Blonde, based on
the novel of the same title by Amanda Brown, a variation on
the plot of Pushkin’s Eugen Onegin with cartoonized characters.
Indeed, one particular blonde, Elle Woods (played by Reese
Witherspoon), has more fun and insists on being taken seriously.
Despite being a straight-A college student in Los Angeles,
majoring in fashion merchandising, Elle upon graduation expects
to marry fellow student Warner Huntington III (played by Matthew
Davis). Although she is from a wealthy Bel-Air family, she
represents new wealth, and she so overdresses that she appears
to be a clown. What Warner is looking for is someone from
an East Coast elite family, such as the Rockefellers and the
Vanderbilts. At a dinner when she anticipates a marriage proposal,
Warner instead tells her that the relationship must end so
that he can fulfill his destiny as a Harvard Law School graduate
who will take a seat in the United States Senate that has
long been occupied by the men of his family. After a week
of self-pity and chocolate candies for being jilted, Elle
snaps out of her depression with a plan true to her upbeat
personality--She will go to Harvard Law, despite her father’s
warning that she will meet those who are "boring, ugly, and
serious," to prove her worthiness to Warner. Accordingly,
she videotapes a daffy application essay in a bikini with
a lot of pizzazz, and she studies hard (with the help of her
sorority sisters) in order to receive a high score on the
LSAT. The Harvard Law admission committee, consisting of all
white males, decides to admit her after the criterion of diversity
is trotted out in her defense despite the obvious "dumb blonde"
stereotype in the campy tape. Upon arrival at Harvard, she
runs into Warner, who exhibits a girlfriend from an aristocratic
family, Vivian Kensington (played by Selma Blair). But the
rest of the students, including a Lesbian and a dork whom
women avoid, assume that she is dumb because she is blonde
and wears ultrastylish clothes rather than the usual conservative
garb. Nevertheless, she studies hard and impresses her professors.
Professor Callahan (played by Victor Garber) is so enchanted
by her performance in class that he selects her to be a summer
intern in his law firm. The case assigned to the interns involves
a defendant on trial for murdering her husband; since the
defendant turns out to be a sorority sister who graduated
four years before Elle, the two quickly establish rapport.
During the trial, Elle spots a clue that a key witness for
the prosecution has perjured himself, and the law professor’s
partner Emmett Richmond (played by Luke Wilson) conducts an
interrogation to discredit the witness’ credibility. Impressed
with her intuition, the law professor offers Elle a better
position in exchange for sex. Indignantly, she refuses and
resigns from the internship project. However, the defendant
fires the law professor as her defense attorney and hires
Elle, who has not passed the bar; when the law professor objects,
the judge rules in favor of the change of attorneys when Richmond
steps forward to serve as her legal co-counsel. In her questioning
of the defendant’s stepdaughter, Elle again saves the day
when the murder victim’s daughter claims that she was taking
a shower soon after receiving a permanent, whereupon fashion-freak
Elle declares that any woman would know better, resulting
in a confession in open court by the stepdaughter. The defendant
is released, the stepdaughter is arrested, Elle spurns Warner
(as does Vivian), and she makes a valedictory address at the
graduation ceremony, stating various truisms about self-respect.
Legally Blonde, directed by Robert Luketic,
thus is a farce with plenty of laughs and many delightful
subplots, especially the love affair of manicurist Paulette
(played by Jennifer Coolidge) and how Elle gets two women
to fight for a date with the dork. The film makes such points
as that men can be jerks, blondes should be taken seriously,
women’s intelligence is underrated, appearances deceive, and
women can break through glass ceilings just by honestly being
themselves. For those who believe that the plot is totally
absurd, I can recall a famous female attorney named Gladys
Cowles Root, who defended gays entrapped by Los Angeles Police
Department officers during the 1950s; appearing in court each
day with a new hat color and a matching outlandish fashion
outfit, she so distracted juries that she never lost a case.
But she never pretended to be a bushy-tailed airhead. MH
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