‘Elle’ review: Amazon’s bland ‘Legally Blonde’ prequel doesn’t make sense as a ‘Legally Blonde’ prequel

If you think of Elle Woods as a singular (albeit fictional) individual who exists within a singular (albeit fictional) continuity, the new Amazon Legally blonde A prequel that defies all narrative logic.

The entire premise of the previous film was that this girl from California arrives at Harvard oblivious to life beyond boys, clothes, and sorority fraternity. deerRevealing that she previously spent her teenage years surrounded by Seattle rockers and activists is such a contradiction in character that a gap would be required. Days of our lives-Amnesia attack level to fill it.

But, on the other hand, if you think of Elle Woods as an endlessly replayable IP series in the vein of James Bond or Superman, and this latest adventure serves as a loose re-adaptation of Laura Brown’s source novel rather than an expansion of it, deer It makes perfect sense from a business standpoint – although still somewhat creatively so. Gentle enough but not as glamorous as its cinematic predecessor, the new series does a lot to highlight the limits of the world. Legally blonde Concept as adaptability.

As expected, Elle (Lexi Mintree) begins her story as a sheltered princess in Los Angeles, though the choice to make her a high school student in 1995, rather than a college graduate in 2001, makes her feel a little too close to… ignorantCher Horowitz to the original Elle Woods. In the beginning, she’s got it all: loving parents (Tom Everett Scott’s Wyatt and June Diane Raphael’s Eva), a huge mansion in Bel Air, a close-knit group of friends, a cute boy waiting in the wings, and even a three-point plan to overcome the social hierarchy in the new school year.

Then, on the evening of her sixteenth birthday, Elle receives the shocking news that the Woods family is moving to Seattle. Suddenly, everything that made her so admired in Los Angeles—her girlishness, her effervescence, her taste for pink Barbie minidresses—makes her suspect to a student body so homogenous that the requisite cafeteria tour goes from one table of kids in gray flannels and black Dr. Martens to the next.

This is, of course, by no means a fair depiction of the Emerald City, and anyone who lived during that era or lived in the city is bound to draw their attention to how stereotypically cliche it feels. but deerThe tongue-in-cheek tone, with a soundtrack of nostalgia needle drops like Radiohead, Soundgarden, and Garbage (the latter for the opening title sequence), is enough to keep it from feeling like an affectionate normie fantasy of ’90s anti-establishment rather than an insult to Seattle’s tough population of people who like team sports well and don’t wear exclusively neutral-colored plaid.

The biggest problem is that the flatness of the show’s setting contradicts its very premise. On the one hand, Seattle is all punk rebels marching to the beat of their own drum; On the other hand, all those individual drums seem to be in sync with the exact same beat. Only Elle seems out of sync, and she despises this “conformity.” This framing strangely, if unintentionally, invokes the defensive reactionary position that rich, straight, white women are the most oppressed of all, though the effect weakens as other individual figures become more objectified.

However, despite the obstacles presented by her flaxen hair and fashionable wardrobe – and the biggest drawback of that… Immediately Upsetting the most popular girl in school (Kimberly Chandler Kinney) on her first day – Elle begins to find her place. First, this is done by helping to raise money for the school’s underpaid support staff, then by campaigning for the reinstatement of a wrongfully expelled member of said support staff (Amy Beetz as a messy but well-meaning secretary), and then by investigating a larger conspiracy around these events that comes to the top (e.g. the Smarmy school principal played by Matt Oberg).

Lots of deerMinetree’s initial draw is based on Minetree’s lead performance, which comes uncannily close to Reese Witherspoon’s performance in the film. Not only does Minetree sound more like Witherspoon (who is credited as the EP) than Witherspoon’s daughter herself, she masters every vocal tone and physical twitch with exquisite precision. It’s a role that’s impressive enough on a technical level and likable enough on an emotional level to make you wish Minetree had actually been allowed to make the role her own.

As with any ongoing series, though, deerLong-term sustainability will live or die by its collection. There too, the results were promising but not yet amazing. Scott doesn’t have much to do as the jovial father who takes to Seattle like a duck to water, but his uselessness is part of the joke and then part of the plot. Raphael is very well cast as Eva, a comedic ditz who gradually transitions into a bittersweet journey of self-discovery to mirror Elle’s journey after she befriends a local politician (the late James Van Der Beek in his final role).

Among the kids, Zach Luker is likable as Dustin, a skateboarding activist who senses an unexpected spirit in Elle, while Gabrielle Policano displays a quiet calm as Liz, the shy musician to whom Elle is drawn. (It’s not. Unfortunately.) But characters like Miles (Jacob Moskowitz), who has a crush on Elle’s cute boy, seem to have been conceived primarily for what they represent to Elle—in this case, a foil to mainstream Seattle activists and artists—rather than as uniquely interesting characters in their own right.

In the meantime, though, I’ll give the show credit for not completely overdoing it Legally blonde The Easter eggs, the ones she indulges in, range from the delightful (“I would never complain about seeing her chihuahua, Bruiser”) to the downright whining (“Hey, Elle, have you ever thought about becoming a lawyer someday?”). It’s hard to blame deer For his desire to make those connections, since taking advantage of the remaining affection of Legally blonde It’s the only reason it exists in the first place. But like her heroine, she feels stuck somewhere between the show she thought she wanted to be and the show she has the potential to become.