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Pink poise
by CarlosC (movies profile)
May 18, 2007
18
of
23 people found this review helpful
She's rich, she's blonde, and she's in love. Reese Witherspoon is a shallow, materialistic, pink and fur loving fashion merchandising major who decides to go to Harvard Law School to get her boyfriend (Luke Wilson) back, after he dumps her because he wants to marry "up." With her Chihuahua ("Bruiser") in tow, and plenty of outrageous outfits, the ever peppy Witherspoon shows up at Harvard Yard, asking for her social calendar -- expecting law school to be a continuation of her happy-go-lucky college experience.
She, of course, is wrong. But so, of course, is everyone else, who dismiss her as a ditzy West Coast bimbette who lacks the finesse and chutzpa to hang with the East Coast elite. At first, this comedy works as a sort of "CLUELESS (1995) meets THE PAPER CHASE (1973)" as the popularity conscious and desperately out-of-her-element Witherspoon tries to figure out and navigate the dog-eat-dog world of first year Harvard Law. Professors humiliate her in class, her classmates snicker when she walks into the room, and her ex-boyfriend (Wilson) and his new fiancée (Selma Blair) are spectacularly mean to her.
LEGALLY BLONDE is a cute movie with a heart. And, there's a point to what might otherwise seem like a silly, dismissible storyline -- that everyone has something to bring to the table. Witherspoon ends up unexpectedly working alongside the other top students on a case for an influential professor (Victor Garber), in which Witherspoon's compulsive shopping, appearance conscious, superficial sensibilities turn out to be exactly the kinds of insights required. There is a trial sequence in which an exercise guru whom Witherspoon admires is accused of a murder. But, it is Witherspoon who is acquitted when she gets an opportunity to show her classmates, and even herself, that she can be serious.
The cherry topping this saccharine plot is that Witherspoon remains essentially unchanged: it is the world which must alter its posture towards her. Witherspoon attains self-realization, but not by denying what she was before: only by realizing that what she thought she wanted was an illusion which clouded her ability to see what she *really* wanted, which she gets in the end. This is the classic plot trajectory for a three act screen play, and BLONDE executes the somersault with impeccable poise, dismounting with near perfect timing at the hour and a half point.
(Carlos Colorado) |
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