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Legally Blonde

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This article is about the 2001 film. For other uses, see Legally Blonde (disambiguation).
Legally Blonde
File:Legally blonde.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed byRobert Luketic
Screenplay byKaren McCullah Lutz
Kirsten Smith
Produced byRic Kidney
Marc E. Platt
StarringReese Witherspoon
Luke Wilson
Selma Blair
Matthew Davis
Victor Garber
Jennifer Coolidge
Holland Taylor
CinematographyAnthony B. Richmond
Edited byAnita Brandt-Burgoyne
Garth Craven
Music byRolfe Kent
Production
companies
Distributed byMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date
  • July 13, 2001 (2001-07-13)
Running time
96 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$18 million
Box office$141,774,679[1]

Legally Blonde is a 2001 American comedy film directed by Robert Luketic, written by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, and produced by Marc E. Platt. It is based on the novel Legally Blonde by Amanda Brown.[2]

The film stars Reese Witherspoon as a sorority girl who struggles to win back her ex-boyfriend by earning a law degree, along with Luke Wilson as a young attorney that she meets during her studies, Matthew Davis as her ex-boyfriend, Selma Blair as his new fiancée, Victor Garber and Holland Taylor as law professors, Jennifer Coolidge as a manicurist and friend, and Ali Larter as a fitness instructor accused of murder.

The film released in America on July 13, 2001, and received positive reviews. It was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture: Musical or Comedy[3] and was ranked 29th on Bravo's 2007 list of "100 Funniest Movies".[4] For her performance, Witherspoon received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and the 2002 MTV Movie Award for Best Female Performance.

The box-office success led to a 2003 sequel, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, and a 2009 direct-to-DVD spin-off, Legally Blondes. Additionally, Legally Blonde: The Musical premiered on January 23, 2007, in San Francisco and opened in New York City at the Palace Theatre on Broadway on April 29, 2007, starring Laura Bell Bundy.

Plot

The film opens with sorority President Elle Woods on a date with her boyfriend Warner Huntington III, who will be attending Harvard Law School the following year. During the date, Elle expects a marriage proposal but instead her boyfriend breaks up with her.

Desperate to win Warner back, she prepares and takes the Law School Admission Test and gets into Harvard Law School. At the school she is ridiculed because of her feminine dress sense and naive behavior. She also meets Warner's finaceé, Vivian Kensington. In her first class, Elle is ejected for being unprepared.

Determined to succeed, Elle studies hard and impresses everyone, also winning her an internship with the respected Professor Callahan to assist in the defence of Brooke Taylor-Windham, a fitness instructor accused of murdering her billionaire husband. Elle knows of Brooke as she's used her fitness course and is convinced that she is innocent. Brooke's alibi is the keystone of the case, but she will not divulge it.

Brooke befriends Elle and tells reveals her alibi, but asks Elle to keep it secret, which she does. Without the alibi, Brooke's case weakens. Elle's fashion background helps her deduce that the preosecution's main witness - the pool boy - is lying about having an affair with Brooke, but when she shares this with Callahan he dismisses it out of hand. Emmett, Callahan's associate lawyer and Elle's friend, tricks the pool boy into admitting that he is gay in court and disproves his testimony.

Later, Callahan makes sexual advances on Elle which she rejects. After overhearing part of this attempted seduction, Vivian confronts Elle and accuses her of using sex to further her career. Frustrated, Elle decides to leave law school. Professor Stromwell intervenes and reinvigorates Elle's confidence. Meanwhile, Emmett explains Elle's encounter with Callahan to Vivian and Brooke. Enraged, Brooke dismisses Callahan and hires Elle as her new attorney. Elle cross-examines the stepdaughter's testimony and is not only able to disprove it, but provokes the daughter into revealing that she killed her father by accident thinking it was Brooke. This solves the case and Brooke is exonerated. After the trial, Warner tries to reconcile with Elle, but she rejects him.

Two years later, Elle graduates with high honors and a job offer from Boston's best law firms. Finally, Emmett starts his own practice and is in a relationship with Elle.

Cast

Production

Hip hop choreographers Napoleon and Tabitha D'umo choreographed the "Bend and Snap" routine before they achieved greater fame as choreographers for the hit Fox show So You Think You Can Dance.[citation needed]

Although the film's setting is Harvard University, it was actually filmed at the University of Southern California,[5] University of California, Los Angeles,[6] California Institute of Technology, and Rose City High School in Pasadena, California. The graduation scene is filmed at Dulwich College, in London, England, since Reese Witherspoon was at the time filming her next project (The Importance of Being Earnest) in that city. The real Harvard only appears briefly in certain aerial shots.

In the novel and original script, Warner and Elle attend Stanford Law School. Stanford, however, disapproved of the script, and the setting was changed to Harvard Law School.[7]

The producers intentionally gave Elle a different hairstyle for every scene.

The movie appears to make several subtle shout-outs to John Grisham novels, most humorously with the names of Elle's and Paulette's dogs—Bruiser and Rufus—who both share names with Grisham's sleazy attorney characters—Elle's chihuahua apparently being named after J. Lyman "Bruiser" Stone from the novel The Rainmaker, and Paulette's bulldog after District Attorney Rufus Buckley from A Time to Kill. Additionally, Grisham's novel The Pelican Brief features its own Professor Callahan with a penchant for inappropriate relationships with law students. The opening song and main theme, "Perfect Day", was performed by Hoku.

Reception

Legally Blonde was released on July 13, 2001, in North America. Its opening-weekend gross of $20 million[1] made it a sleeper hit for the struggling MGM studio, and it went on to gross $96.5 million in North America and $45.2 million internationally for a worldwide total of $141.7 million.[1]

The film was also a critical success. Based on 130 reviews collected by review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 68% of the critics gave Legally Blonde positive ratings, ranking the film as "fresh". Most reviews praised Reese Witherspoon's lead performance, although some denigrated the overall merit of the film.[8] Metacritic reported that the film had an average score of 59, based on 31 reviews.[9] At the 2001 Golden Globe Awards ceremony, the film was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Picture – Musical or Comedy and Witherspoon was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Actress – Musical or Comedy.[10]

Soundtrack

Musical

Main article: Legally Blonde (musical)

In 2007, a musical adaptation premiered on Broadway to mixed reviews, starring Laura Bell Bundy as Elle, Christian Borle as Emmett, Orfeh as Paulette, Nikki Snelson as Brooke, Richard H. Blake as Warner, Kate Shindle as Vivienne, and Michael Rupert as Callahan. Other cast members included Andy Karl, Leslie Kritzer, Annaleigh Ashford, DeQuina Moore, and Natalie Joy Johnson. The show, Bundy, Borle, and Orfeh were all nominated for Tony Awards. Later, the Broadway show was the focus of an MTV reality TV series called Legally Blonde – The Musical: The Search for Elle Woods, in which the winner would take over the role of Elle on Broadway. Bailey Hanks from Anderson, South Carolina, won the competition.

Legally Blonde had a successful three-year run at the Savoy Theatre in London's West End which starred Sheridan Smith, Susan McFadden and Carley Stenson as Elle and Duncan James, Richard Fleeshman, Simon Thomas and Ben Freeman as Warner. The cast over the three-year run has also included Alex Gaumond, Denise Van Outen, and Lee Mead.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c "Legally Blonde (2001)". Box Office Mojo. 2001-11-18. Retrieved 2016-03-12.
  2. ^ By A. O. Scott. "Legally-Blonde - Trailer - Cast - Showtimes". NYTimes.com. Retrieved 2016-03-12.
  3. ^ Jamie Allen. "CNN.com - Globes: 'Beautiful,' 'Moulin' golden - December 20, 2001". Edition.cnn.com. Retrieved 2016-03-12. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Text "CNN" ignored (help)
  4. ^ "BRAVO 100 Funniest Movies". The Film Spectrum. Retrieved 2016-03-12.
  5. ^ [1][dead link‍]
  6. ^ "Search - UCLA Undergraduate Admission". Admissions.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2016-03-12.
  7. ^ "Stanford Magazine - Article". Stanfordalumni.org. Retrieved 2016-03-12.
  8. ^ "Legally Blonde (2001)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2016-03-12.
  9. ^ "Legally Blonde Reviews". Metacritic. 2001-07-13. Retrieved 2016-03-12.
  10. ^ "15 Years of Reese Witherspoon | Fox News Magazine". Magazine.foxnews.com. Retrieved 2016-03-12.
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