Director: Robert Luketic
Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair, Matthew Davis
Have I Seen it Before: I think so? Like, somewhere in last twenty years I would have to have seen it, right?
Did I Like It: Look, let’s not mince words. This is another one of those instances where Lora wanted to watch something, and I was amenable, mainly because I had a new set of Lego with which to tinker. I promised when I began these reviews that as long as I didn’t fall asleep through the screening, I would go ahead and write a review.
So, here we are.
The above seems to indicate I want to dismiss the film, and that’s not entirely true. This is not cosmetic snobbishness. I’d feel this way about any movie where the protagonist bravely decides to go to law school. I’m never going to buy into that scenario. To quote Elle Woods (Witherspoon), “You’ve got the wrong girl.”
Sure, it’s a slight comedy with not a lot of ambition written into the idea. The plot is cookie cutter to the point where it feels like a pre-written chapter in a screenwriting book that people buy to avoid, you know, actually writing... As I write this, my only reason for suspecting that I have seen the film before was that I saw the perm-based resolution of the plot coming a mile away.
At the same time, it manages to succeed at what it strives for far more than it’s normally given credit. It would be so easy for Elle Woods to be an absolute nightmare of a person, rendering her struggles cathartic. Yet, the film deftly avoids making her awful. She’s never judgmental, she always helps people around her, and a key to the success of the film, she largely earns her status as an underdog, despite her absolutely pure privilege. Some of that is probably Witherspoon’s performance, but more than a little bit of it has to be that screenplay which doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel.