‘Elle’ Evaluate: Amazon’s Cute-Sufficient ‘Legally Blonde’ Prequel Makes No Sense as a ‘Legally Blonde’ Prequel

When you consider Elle Woods as a singular (albeit fictional) particular person present inside a singular (albeit fictional) continuity, Amazon’s new Legally Blonde prequel defies all narrative logic.

All the premise of the sooner movie was that this California woman arrives at Harvard oblivious to life past boys, garments and sorority sisterhood; Elle’s reveal that she’d beforehand spent her teen years amid the grunge rockers and activists of Seattle is a personality inconsistency so gaping it’d require a Days of Our Lives-level bout of amnesia to fill it.

But when, alternatively, you consider Elle Woods as an endlessly rebootable franchise IP à la James Bond or Superman, and this newest journey as a free re-adaptation of Laura Brown’s supply novel quite than an enlargement of it, Elle makes excellent sense from a enterprise standpoint — although nonetheless solely considerably from a inventive one. Amiable sufficient however nowhere close to as charming as its cinematic predecessor, the brand new collection does as a lot to focus on the boundaries of the Legally Blonde idea as its adaptability.

As you’d anticipate, this Elle (Lexi Minetree) begins her story as a sheltered L.A. princess, although the selection to make her a rising highschool junior in 1995, quite than a graduating school senior in 2001, makes her really feel as a lot a kin to Clueless‘s Cher Horowitz as to the unique Elle Woods. Initially, she’s obtained all of it: two loving mother and father (Tom Everett Scott’s Wyatt and June Diane Raphael’s Eva), an unlimited Bel-Air mansion, a tight-knit group of gal buddies, a cute boy ready within the wings, even a three-point plan for conquering the social hierarchy within the new college 12 months.

Then, on the night of her sixteenth birthday, Elle receives the devastating information that the Woodses are shifting to Seattle. Instantly, every thing that made her so admired in L.A. — her girlishness, her bubbliness, her style for Barbie-pink minidresses — makes her suspect to a pupil physique so homogenously grungy that the requisite cafeteria clique tour simply cuts from one desk of children in grey flannels and black Doc Martens to a different.

That is, in fact, under no circumstances a good portrayal of the Emerald Metropolis, and anybody who lived via the period or lived within the city is certain to roll their eyes at how cheesily stereotypical it feels. However Elle‘s tongue-in-cheek tone, soundtracked to nostalgic needle drops like Radiohead, Soundgarden and Rubbish (the latter for the opening title sequence), is sufficient to maintain it from feeling like a normie’s affectionate fantasy of ’90s anti-establishment cool quite than an insult to Seattle’s sturdy inhabitants of people that like workforce sports activities simply effective and don’t costume completely in neutral-toned plaids.

The larger problem is that the flatness of the present’s setting contradicts its very premise. On the one hand, Seattle is all punky rebels marching to the beat of their very own drums; on the opposite, all these particular person drums are apparently synced to the very same rhythm. Solely Elle appears out of tune, and she or he’s scorned for this “conformity.” The framing awkwardly if unintentionally evokes the defensive reactionary place that wealthy, straight, female white girls are essentially the most oppressed of all, although the impact mellows as different particular person characters turn out to be extra fleshed out.

In any case, regardless of the obstacles of her flaxen hair and classy designer wardrobe — and the even larger drawback of getting instantly pissed off the most well-liked woman in class (Chandler Kinney’s Kimberly) on her very first day — Elle begins to search out her place. First it’s by serving to increase cash for the college’s underpaid help employees, then by campaigning to reinstate an unjustly fired member of stated help employees (Amy Pietz as a messy however well-meaning secretary), then by investigating a bigger conspiracy round these occasions that goes all the way in which to the highest (i.e., a smarmy college principal performed by Matt Oberg).

A lot of Elle’s preliminary draw rests on the lead efficiency by Minetree, which hews uncannily near Reese Witherspoon’s from the film. Not solely does Minetree look extra like Witherspoon (who’s credited as an EP) than Witherspoon’s personal daughter, she nails each vocal inflection and bodily tic with sweet-as-pie precision. It’s a flip spectacular sufficient on a technical stage and likable sufficient on an emotional one to have you ever wishing Minetree had truly been allowed to make the position her personal.

As with all ongoing collection, although, Elle’s long-term sustainability will stay or die by its ensemble. There, too, the outcomes are promising however not but spectacular. Scott has not a lot to do because the cheerfully dorky dad who takes to Seattle like a duck to water, however his very uselessness is a part of the joke after which a part of the plot. Raphael could be very effectively forged as Eva, a comic-relief ditz who step by step transitions right into a bittersweet journey of self-discovery to reflect Elle’s after she befriends a neighborhood politician (the late James Van Der Beek in his final position).

Of the children, Zac Looker is endearing as potential love curiosity Dustin, a stoner-skateboarder-activist who senses an unlikely kindred spirit in Elle, whereas Gabrielle Policano exudes a low-key cool as Liz, a shy musician Elle is drawn to. (Not like that. Sadly.) However characters like Elle’s nice-boy crush Miles (Jacob Moskovitz) appear conceptualized primarily for what they characterize to Elle — on this case, the mainstream jock-lite foil to Seattle’s activists and artists — quite than uniquely attention-grabbing personalities in their very own proper.

In the meantime, although I’ll give the present credit score for not going completely overboard with the Legally Blonde Easter eggs, those it does bask in vary from pleasant (I’ll by no means complain about seeing her chihuahua, Bruiser) to downright groanworthy (“Hey, Elle, have you ever ever thought-about changing into a lawyer in the future?”). It’s onerous accountable Elle for eager to make these connections, since capitalizing on the lingering affection for Legally Blonde is the one purpose it exists within the first place. However like its personal heroine, it feels caught someplace between the present it thought it needed to be and the present it has the potential to turn out to be.