Legally Blonde Ponderings

I just watched Legally Blonde. For probably the billionth time. That's a more or less accurate estimate.

Piss off, it was on television, and I was about to go to bed when I got lured in. Damn you Elle Woods and your hypnotically shiny hair! I love this film, despite the fact that it's more chicky and flicky than someone actually flicking a chick whilst watching Pretty Woman. Aww... I feel bad for the hypothetical chick now. He's free-range - there - I feel a bit better now.

For those of you unacquainted with the film, please believe me when I say it is not lacking in plot nor intelligence. The fact that it's sprinkled with pink and glitter does not detract from the very funny and clever film. Yes, I had to ignore many, many gender stereotypes, but if I can suspend my belief for Harry Potter and shit like that, I can do it for this film too. The character of Elle is able to find the balance of ditsy blonde and intelligent law student, and she is quite adorable.

This is the gist of it:

1. Elle's boyfriend breaks up with her because he wants to be a senator and "he needs to marry a Jackie, not a Marilyn". He goes to Harvard Law. She decides to get into Harvard Law too so her boyfriend will think she's sensible and clever.
2. Elle already gets good grades, but has to pass a law exam. She achieves this after an intense studying montage, and gets in due to her grades, passing the exam, and the fact that she's wearing a bikini in her application video.
3. When she gets to Harvard, everyone is mean to her. She finds out her ex-boyfriend got engaged to a plain girl (who also goes to Harvard) over the summer. After much taunting from this girl, and being disregarded as stupid by her ex-boyfriend, she realises she will never be good enough for him and decides to become top of her class to show them how smart she can be.
4. After the second studying montage of the film, Elle becomes top of her class and gets an internship along with her ex-boyfriend and his fiance with one of their professor's law firms.
5. She demonstrates her character and intelligence many times whilst assisting on a murder trial for a woman accused of killing her husband. The woman on trial happens to have been in the same sorority as Elle, and are friends.
   
6. Elle's professor who she is working for hits on her, and Elle quits the case. When the woman on trial hears about this, she fires the professor and hires Elle.
7. Elle wins the case, and lives happily ever after as demonstrated below:
   
   
8. Elle graduates top of her class, becomes best-friends with her ex-boyfriend's now ex-fiance, and is proposed to by the partner of her professor's law firm. They all live blondily ever after. The dog wears a pink jacket. Hooray.
   

Awesome. Anyway, here are a few things I did not like about the film...

• The fact that she cares whether her massive shitbag of a boyfriend likes her or not until pretty much halfway through the film.
• She gets into Harvard, ultimately, because she wears a bikini in her application video.
  
• There's too many women exercising. It makes me feel lazy and pervy.
• The suggestion that montages achieve everything and anything.
• How mean all the law students are to her because she's blonde and wears pink. They would not be that rude to her, and at least not to her face. They're intelligent, open-minded people - law students aren't allowed to discriminate!
  
• 3 people get engaged in this film. It's not four weddings and a bloody funeral! The fact that even at the end when Elle graduates top of Harvard motherlicking Law, she is still not seen as having a fully happy ending until she's married off to a guy with stupid hair.
  
• On that note: I'm sorry, but a 6 carats? That's obscene.
• All men, except the 'nice guy' she ends up with are mean bastards.
  
• She is depicted as clearly very intelligent, yet the way she wins the case seems to be a fortunate accident.
  

Basically, my overall thinking about the film is that it's good if I can ignore the fact that I'm a feminist for an hour and a bit. This is totally doable, because it's ultimately a very fun film to watch, but that doesn't mean that it's for everybody.