| Legally Blonde should be a crime. This surprising hit plays like a bad sitcom: A spoiled rich girl named Elle (Reese Witherspoon) leaves her posh Bel Air world to conquer Harvard Law School. The result is an insufferable hour and a half that never makes good use of its lead character. Thanks to the times, she's not even allowed to be a dumb blonde. Instead, we're reminded that she's a 4.0 student who can do anything she wants to do. And the movie never really pokes fun at this person who is pure image and no substance. So Blonde spoils its own humor. The one good joke in this movie will fly over its teen-dominated audience's heads: Elle pines over her dimwitted but ambitious ex-boyfriend, a budding future senator named Warner. (Paging Liz Taylor, onetime wife of real-life former Sen. John Warner, R-Va.) Much of the movie is spent with the lead slowly gaining acceptance in law school, which she does with apparent ease. (Ex-boyfriend: "You got into Harvard Law?" Elle: "What? Like it's hard?") Then at the end she wins an internship and Blonde shifts gears from being Clueless II to a My Cousin Vinny clone. A maddening character like this doesn't deserve (fur-lined) kid gloves. This sort of movie celebrates the clever, stylish blow-off. Instead of hard work, she builds success on scheming, luck, and good looks. |
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