Friday, November 25, 2022

My Cousin Vinny meets Reversal of Fortune

I mentioned the other day that DirecTV is running its annual Thanksgiving weekend free preview of all the premium movie channels. As a result, I've already recorded several movies, and even watched one of them since it's going to be on again tomorrow. That movie is Legally Blonde, which gets another airing at 11:30 AM Nov. 26 on The Movie Channel Xtra, as well as frequent further airings over the course of the next few weeks.

Reese Witherspoon plays Elle Woods, who at the start of the movie is a senior majoring in fashion marketing at a state school out on the west coast, holding down a 4.0 GPA while also serving as the president of the sorority of which she's a member. She's got a boyfriend in Warner Huntington III (Matthew Davis), although I'm not certain why they're an item at the start of the movie considering the differing personalities. Indeed, Warner dumps Elle fairly early on because his family has plans for him that involve his going to Harvard Law School and eventually running for political office. A stereotypically ditzy blonde like Elle is certainly not part of that plan.

Elle, for her part, still loves Warner, so she decides that she's going to try to win him back... by getting accepted to Harvard Law School, even though she hasn't previously shown any big desire for law school. Still, she takes the LSAT and does well enough that, combined with the GPA and breaking the stereotypes for what sort of person should go to law school, the addmissions committee decides to take a flyer on her.

Elle gets to Harvard Law School and finds that Warner already has a new girlfriend in the form of Vivian (Selma Blair), and that she doesn't fit in with the other people there in general. To add to that, she hasn't prepared for law school at all, as she shows in her very first class, where Prof. Stromwell (Holland Taylor) summarily dismisses her for not having read the material. Obviously Elle never watched The Paper Chase before heading off to Harvard.

One of Elle's other professors is Callahan (Victor Garber), who, like Alan Dershowitz, does real legal work on the side, although the movie implies that his law firm is more important than his professorship, which I don't think is the case for most real-life law professors. Callahan has a partner at his firm in the form of former student Emmett Richmond (Luke Wilson), who still can be seen around campus.

Prof. Callahan is running some sort of internship scheme as well, and Elle decides she's going to apply herself and try to get accepted for that in order to impress the rest of her classmates. Indeed, she does, along with Warner and Vivian, who are none too pleased about it. And here is where Elle starts to get her chance to shine. Prof. Callahan is taking the defense of one Brooke Taylor-Windham (Ali Larter), a wealthy socialite who married a much older man and who is now on trial for the man's murder, which she insists she did not committ. Much like Alan Dershowitz's students in Reversal of Fortune, the interns are going to help with the defense.

Brooke, like Elle, happens to be a Delta Nu sorority sister, although several years before Elle, and that gives Brooke reason to trust Elle when she's not so willing to trust anybody else. Brooke does have an airtight alibi for why she couldn't commit the murder, but it's one that would ruin her business reputation, which is why she's reluctant to reveal it to anybody but Elle. But Elle's intuition, combined with some of the things that make her the stereotype of the ditzy blonde, wind up working in her favor when it comes to the murder trial of a rich young socialiate.

This, however, is where some people might also have some problems with the movie. All along, it's the sort of movie that requires some serious suspension of disbelief, but once we get to the trial, which like a lot of Hollywood courtroom scenes bears little resemblance to reality, the disbelief ramps up several notches. For me, however, the bigger issue was in the directing and editing, which seemed slightly off to me. Not to the extent that a movie like Darkest Hour was, but still, something about it gave me the vibe of a moviemaker trying to be different or edgy, when traditional camera techniques and editing were all that was necessary.

At the heart of the movie, however, is a fairly light comedy that largely works even though it's definitely a different sensibility to studio-era Hollywood. That's a result of a very good performance by Witherspoon, who handles the material well, with good support in the second half of the movie from Luke Wilson. It's also a movie that's trying to be entertainment first and, if it has any message about breaking stereotypes or presenting strong women, doesn't really let them override the entertainment.

It's hard to believe that Legally Blonde is already over 20 years old. But if you want light entertainment, give it a watch, as it definitely succeeds in that regard.

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