Let's start with the title: Legally Blonde is yet another pun based on the similarity between "blonde" and "blind," in the grand tradition of Blond Ambition and Blonde Fury. Yet, while unoriginal, it manages to add a soupçon of distastefulness to this well-worn gag by being the first to riff on a phrase referring to actual sightlessness. We do not slouch from bad taste…if it's at least in the service of something really, really clever. (Springtime for Hitler leaps to mind.) But in this case, sad to say, the title is a good sampling of the wit level of the film as a whole.
Witherspoon plays Elle Woods, a spoiled, brain-dead sorority bimbo from the Delta Nu chapter at "CULA." (The portrayal of this thinly disguised Southern California campus's student body should be grounds for a class-action suit on behalf of the hardworking kids over in Westwood.) Elle thinks her boyfriend, Warner (Matthew Davis of Tigerland and Pearl Harbor), is about to pop the big question before heading off to Harvard Law School, but she's living in a fool's paradise.
Instead, Warner breaks up with her, explaining that, while he loves her, she just wouldn't be an acceptable wife for the East Coast establishment lifestyle his parents have chosen for him. (His brother has just gotten engaged to a Vanderbilt girl, a match that in the film's view must obviously be loveless, since, gosh, Ms. Vanderbilt has committed the horrible sin of being homely.) But Elle, like countless other lovelorn airheads before her, has pluck (and apparently limitless money and unbelievable luck), so she decides to get into Harvard Law herself and show that snooty ol' Warner that she can be everything he's looking for.
Clearly this is not high realism, as Elle proceeds to do everything so totally wrong in the application process that the admissions committee is inexplicably impressed and lets her in on the grounds of "diversity." (Let us briefly pause to consider the fact that Elle seems to be applying at the end of her senior year to start school that fall. They could have at least attempted some lame explanation for that.)
Next thing you know, there's Elle and Warner both as first-year students at Harvard Law, where our heroine quickly embarrasses herself by dressing and acting exactly like the absurd ditz she is. You'd think an honors graduate of CULA's Fashion Marketing BA program might know that heels and flouncy pink outfits are not really de rigueur on Ivy League campuses, but not our Elle. All of which gives lots of ammunition to Warner's spiteful, snobby new fiancée, Vivian (Selma Blair, who also appeared with Witherspoon in Cruel Intentions).
You know where this is heading. Through a remarkable series of coincidences, Elle finds herself working as an intern on the defense of an accused murderer, whom the blond barrister-in-waiting just happens to know and whom, being her cultural twin, she can relate to better than any of the other lawyers. Eventually, somehow, the specialized knowledge Elle has about fashion, makeup and hair care will end up saving the day.
The final courtroom scene demands comparison to the climax of My Cousin Vinny, another moron-shows-that-book-knowledge-isn't-everything legal epic. Vinny was not a great film, but Marisa Tomei's big revelation testimony was a genuinely exciting, invigorating, funny scene. The equivalent sequence in Legally Blonde has almost no impact: It isn't set up as well, and it flies by so fast that it makes the abrupt denouements in the Perry Mason TV show seem positively leisurely. (There's also a weird notion that since a male character has a boyfriend, he can't possibly have a female lover, too. In the world of Legally Blonde, bisexuality doesn't exist.)
Making his feature debut, director Robert Luketic is never able to overcome the basic flaws that underlie the concept. That is, in the manner of Mike Nichols's Working Girl -- which was surely the model for this -- Elle is supposed to be a basically good soul without a trace of snobbery, who is smarter under the surface than she has ever cared to discover. But unlike Melanie Griffith's Tess, who was being held back by her economic background, Elle is a rich kid who has been held back by her own loathsome choices, someone whose actions early on do betray dismissive, superior attitudes based on the shallowest of criteria.
Witherspoon is a likable enough presence to nearly pull this off. (That likability is why she can get away with playing characters we should hate, like the violent, foul-mouthed girl in Freeway.) But the muddiness of the basic concept and the thinness of its execution eventually defeat even her talents.
