Review of Legally Blonde (2001) by Bradens584 — 19 Dec 2020

Legally Blonde is a mixed bag. To start off, this movie is really funny. A lot of the jokes, especially in the first half land pretty well. Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods is also great, she's funny but also gives a somewhat nuanced performance, which is impressive considering the material she was given.

The concept is also rather creative and overall a strong idea. And that's about as far as my affections for this movie goes. The plot is generic and every story beat you see coming ten miles away, which isn't a horrible thing, I could still enjoy it with this being the case.

But what really sinks this movie is the awful writing. Every character is what the writers need them to be for their next generic cliché plot point, characters flip flop for apparently no reason throughout the film.

And the dialogue is mostly painfully horrible. All of these problems are exacerbated in the demonstrably bad second half of the movie. If it wasn't for the second half of this film I probably would have given it a positive review, but the jokes almost immediately stops being funny, and all sense of stakes in the story are lost.

Elle's character is meant to grow, but at no point does it seem like she really understands anything she's learning, and proves herself to be a bad lawyer, and even when she does learn something, it's a montage.

A montage. Of course. Because the only way to convey growth is a montage. But the worst part of this final act is the contrivances. Stupid things are everywhere, and they're not funny enough to be jokes, at least good ones, so they're just frustratingly stupid.

Although I did enjoy the Blair Witch Project reference.