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25 YEARS AGO, actor Reese Witherspoon starred in what was a pivotal movie for her – Legally Blonde.
Though Witherspoon has found her groove in recent years in the TV world, in the early 2000s she was a bright young thing on the film scene. In Legally Blonde she played Elle Woods, a perky sorority queen who studies to become a lawyer at Harvard in order to win her ex-boyfriend back.
Though the premise of the film might be dated now, at the time it was beloved for being a charming comedy.
There’s already been two sequels, and now comes a prequel to Legally Blonde, the Prime Video series Elle. Here’s what you need to know about it.
This is a prequel?
Yes indeed – now, I’m not sure if anyone was necessarily asking for this, but Elle Woods has always been a fun screen character.
This prequel brings us back to Elle’s high school days, and essentially is all about showing us the experiences that shaped her into the iconic gal she was in the first Legally Blonde film.
It’s produced by Hello Sunshine – Reese Witherspoon’s production company – and Amazon MGM Studios.
Who’s in the cast?
Elle is played by newcomer Lexi Minetree.
The most familiar name is that of the late James van der Beek, of Dawson’s Creek fame, who died of cancer earlier this year.
Elle’s mother Eva is played by June Diane Raphael (Grace and Frankie) and Tom Everett Scott (That Thing You Do!) is her father Wyatt
What’s the plot?
The action takes place six years before the events in Legally Blonde, when Elle is a teenager. Her parents move from Los Angeles to Seattle because of an issue facing her plastic surgeon father, so she has to start high school afresh there.
Notably this is the 1990s, so the grunge era (though the series is set in 1995, when grunge was certainly at its tail end post the death of Kurt Cobain). Elle, being her bubbly self, doesn’t quite fit into this grungey style, and finds it hard to make friends at school.
Plus the weather in Seattle is a lot rainier and drearier than sunny LA. Not fun for a California girl.
One thing to note here is that it isn’t canon in terms of the original film that Elle had this experience. She certainly doesn’t mention it in Legally Blonde. But for a new series it does make sense to come up with an interesting backstory.
What are critics saying?
Reactions are pretty decent so far, though somewhat mixed:
Screen Rant says:
[It] made me initially question why it exists if it’s just going to copy its source material. However, like Vivian Kensington and the other Harvard law students, I was eventually won over by Elle (and Elle) with its heart and indefatigable underdog spirit.
Yahoo Entertainment says:
“Elle” is a cute, funny fish-out-of-water comedy series that unfolds rather slowly (it might have worked much better as a two-hour movie), and Lexi Minetree in the title role is uncannily good at channeling young Witherspoon’s performance in the 2001 movie.
IndieWire says:
None of it hits, including the forced film tie-ins, and Minetree’s admirable performance — adding sharpness and texture to futile dialogue and lifeless dilemmas — gets lost in perspective-less content destined to be, at most, second-screen entertainment.
Want to make up your own mind? Elle is streaming on Prime Video now.
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