Legally Blonde 律政俏佳人

Legally Blonde(律政俏佳人)is a 2001 American comedy film directed by Robert Luketic. It is based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Amanda Brown. a blonde sorority girl is dumped by her boyfriend, she decides to follow him to Harvard law school to get him back. Legally Blonde ranks number 29 on Bravo's 2007 list of "100 Funniest Movies". Additionally, Legally Blonde: The Musical premiered on January 23, 2007 in San Francisco and opened in New York City at the Palace Theatre on Broadway on April 29, 2007. It opened to very good reviews and box office in London's West End.

Directed by: Robert Luketic

Produced by: Ric Kidney Marc E. Platt

Written by: Karen McCullah Lutz Kirsten Smith

Music by: Rolfe Kent

Cinematography: Anthony B. Richmond

Editing by: Anita-Brandt Burgoyne Garth Craven

Studio: Marc Platt Productions

Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Release date: July 13, 2001

Running time: 97 minutes

Country: United States

Language: English

Genre: Comedy Feature

Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods.

Luke Wilson as Emmett Richmond

Selma Blair as Vivian Kensington

Matthew Davis as Warner Huntington III

Victor Garber as Professor Callahan

Jennifer Coolidge as Paulette Bonafonté

Holland Taylor as Professor Stromwell

Ali Larter as Brooke Taylor Windham

Jessica Cauffiel as Margot

Alanna Ubach as Serena McGuire

Oz Perkins as "Dorkie" David Kidney

Linda Cardellini as Chutney Windham

Bruce Thomas as Kyle, the UPS guy

Meredith Scott Lynn as Enid Wexler

Wayne Federman as Harvard Admissions Counselor

Raquel Welch as Mrs. Windham Vandermark

Greg Serano as Enrique Salvatore

When beautiful sorority president Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) is asked to dinner with her boyfriend Warner, Harvard law student, she believes he is proposing. Instead, Warner breaks up in favor of someone more serious. Then Elle decides to apply for Harvard to become a law student in order to win him back. Elle applies to Harvard and, due to her unconventional application, is accepted.

Elle's law school experience is not as good as she initially hoped. She discovers Warner is engaged to another law student, Vivian Kensington (Selma Blair), who is hostile to Elle. Devastated, Elle expresses her misery and her regret of going to law school to her manicurist, Paulette Bonafonte (Jennifer Coolidge), whom Elle quickly befriends, giving Paulette advice to attract the attention of the UPS driver she is interested in and later helping her gain custody of her dog from her ex-husband.

After Vivian cruelly tricks Elle into attending a party in a Playboy Bunny costume, Elle is determined to do well at law school, studying hard and impressing her professors. This leads her to win an internship with Professor Callahan (Victor Garber), along with Warner, Vivian, Enid Wexler (Meredith Scott Lynn), and Emmett Richmond, an assistant professor at Harvard. Their case is to defend Brooke Taylor-Wyndham (Ali Larter), a famous fitness instructor, accused of murdering her billionaire husband Hayworth Wyndham. Elle remembers Brooke as her own fitness instructor and consequently believes in Brooke's innocence. Two witness accounts made by Brooke's stepdaughter Chutney Wyndham (Linda Cardellini) and one by the household's cabana boy(a male attendant performing personal services to the guests of a hotel or a large private estate, operating from a nearby cabin.), Enrique Salvatore (Greg Serano), said that they saw Brooke standing over her husband's dead body, covered in his blood, thus solidifying Brooke's guilt.

Elle visits Brooke in prison, and manages to get Brooke's alibi. The fact is that Brooke had liposuction(a cosmetic surgical operation in which subcutaneous fat is removed from the body by suction)on the day of the murder. Knowing that it will ruin Brooke's reputation as a fitness instructor, Elle assures Brooke that she will keep it a secret. Elle refuses to give Callahan the alibi, saying she made a promise. Vivian is impressed by Elle’s commitment and her hostility towards Elle disappears, and they start to become friends, Vivian revealing that Warner actually only got into Harvard after his father pulled some strings. Elle uses her knowledge of fashion and intuition to help her move closer to winning the trial, most notably deducing that Enrique is gay after he correctly identifies her shoe style, subsequently revealing that information to Callahan and Emmett. While Callahan dismisses the suggestion, Emmett subsequently asks the name of Enrique's boyfriend during the trial amid a series of questions, to which Enrique answers "Chuck", to the astonishment of the courtroom. Which he quickly tries to cover up by saying that Chuck is just a friend, and "the Chuck" who just happens to be sitting in the court room at the time screams out at Enrique, proving that Enrique is gay and was lying about his affair with Brooke.

An impressed Callahan has a private discussion with Elle about her future career, but makes advances on her. Vivian sees this, but not Elle's reaction, prompting her to lash out at Elle and leaving her convinced that she'll never be taken seriously, Elle thus planning to return to California. Elle bids Paulette farewell, but she encounters Professor Stromwell who encourages her to continue standing up for herself like she had done in Stromwell's class. Emmett reveals the truth about Callahan and Elle's encounter, Elle returns to court and Brooke fires Callahan, hiring Elle as her new attorney, with Emmett supervising her. During her cross-examination, Chutney Windham claims to have been taking a shower and washing her hair at the time of the murder, and the noise drowned out the gunshot. Elle discovers that Chutney had a perm earlier that day, but knows from an incident with a friend of hers that a shower taken twenty-four hours after a perm would have deactivated the ammonium thioglycolate and would have ruined her curls, yet her perm is still intact. Chutney finally breaks down in tears and confesses to accidentally shooting Hayworth because she thought it was Brooke, due to the fact that she despised Brooke for being the same age as her. The entire courtroom gasps in shock. Brooke is exonerated and Chutney is arrested for murder.

While leaving the courthouse, Warner admits he underestimated Elle, and wants her back, but is rejected, Elle having come to prefer her new career. At the graduation ceremony, Elle graduated from Harvard as the class-elected speaker of her graduate class with high honors, and she has been recommended to one of Boston's most successful law firms. Elle's best friend Vivian called off her engagement, while Warner graduated near the bottom of his class. Emmett has quit working for Callahan and started his own practice, is now Elle's boyfriend of two years, and is revealed to be planning to propose to Elle the night of the graduation.

To prepare for her role as Elle, Reese Witherspoon spent two weeks studying the behavior of sorority girls, as she did not wish to portray a stereotypical airhead sorority image. She states on the DVD commentary that they were all very kind and polite, and she enjoyed her time with them. She also observed women shopping from the café at Neiman Marcus, and attended law school for a day. The producers intentionally gave Elle a different hairstyle for every scene. It is said that Reese Witherspoon's character wears 40 different hairstyles throughout the film. As agreed in her contract, Reese Witherspoon kept all of her costumes after filming

Producers originally wanted to set the film at The University of Chicago. School administrators declined, however, because of a scene toward the end of the movie where a professor places his hand on Elle's leg. Filmmakers subsequently decided to have the story take place at Harvard University. Although the film's setting is Harvard University, it was actually filmed at UCLA, and Rose City High School in Pasadena, California. The real Harvard only appears briefly in certain aerial shots.

Elle: Ms. Windham, what had you done earlier that day?
Chutney Windham: I got up. Got a latte. Went to the gym. Got a perm and came home.
Elle: Where you got in the shower?
The Honorable Marina R. Bickford: I believe the witness has made it clear that she was in the shower.
Elle: Yes, your Honor.
Elle: Ms. Windham, had you ever gotten a perm before?
Chutney Windham: Yes.
Chutney Windham: Two a year since I was 12. You do the math.
Elle: You know, a girl in my sorority, Tracy Marcinco got a perm once. We all tried to talk her out of it. Curls weren't a good look for her. She didn't have your bone structure, but thankfully that same day she entered the Pheta Delta Phi wet t-shirt contest where she was completely hosed to down from head to toe.                                                                                                  DA Joyce Rafferty: Objection, why is this relevant?
Elle: I have a point, I promise.
The Honorable Marina R. Bickford: Then make it.
Elle: Chutney, why is it Tracy Marcinco's curls were ruined when she got hosed down?
Chutney Windham: Because they got wet.
Elle: Exactly. Because isn't the first cardinal rule of perm maintenance that you're forbidden to wet your hair for at least 24 hours after getting a perm at the risk of deactivating the immonium thygocolate?
Chutney Windham: Yes.

Elle: And wouldn't somebody who had, say, 30 perms before in their life be well aware of this rule, and if in fact you weren't washing your hair as I suspect you weren't because your curls are still intact, wouldn't you have heard the gunshot, and if in fact you had heard the gunshot Brooke Windham wouldn't have had time to hide the gun before you got downstairs. Which means you would have had to found Brooke Windham with a gun in her hand to make your story plausible, isn't that right?
Chutney Windham: She's my age! Did she tell you that? How would you feel if your father married someone who was your age?
Elle: You, however, Chutney had time to hide the gun after you shot your father.
Chutney Windham: I didn't mean to shoot him!
Chutney Windham: I thought it was YOU walking through the door!
Elle: Oh my God.

The Honorable Marina R. Bickford: Oh my God.
Brooke: Oh my God.
The Honorable Marina R. Bickford: Balliff, take the witness into custody, where she will be charged for the murder of Joseph Windham. Case dismissed. Mrs. Windham, you're free to go.
Brooke: Thank you, your honor.

Elle: And last week I saw Cameron Diaz at Fred Segal, and I talked her out of buying this truly heinous angora sweater. Whoever said orange was the new pink was seriously disturbed.
Elle: The rules of hair care are simple and finite. Any Cosmo girl would have known.
Elle: I just don't think that Brooke could've done this. Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don't shoot their husbands, they just don't.

When Warner is breaking up with Elle, the couple behind Warner pick up their wine glasses twice between shots.

When the new law students are introducing themselves, Enid says that she has a Ph.D. in Women's Studies from UC Berkeley. Berkeley doesn't have a graduate program in Women's Studies.

On the way to meet Mrs. Wyndham at the spa, Elle and Emett drive past assorted subtropical plants. The spa is in Massachusetts where the climate is far too cold for plants to survive.

When a witness is testifying in a trial, they are only sworn in once, before they are questioned. If they retake the stand for further questioning, they are reminded of their oath. However, Chutney is sworn in the first time - when she is testifying before her mother and the pool attendant - and then again when she goes to answer questions for Elle.

When Elle and Paulette are in the house as the snow begins to fall and they look out the window, we see a reflection of bar holing the camera in the window.

Legally Blonde star Reese Witherspoon is horrified to discover many Hollywood producers think women cannot be funny. The blonde beauty thinks the stereotypes of women as humorless are outdated. She says, "There are many stereotypes - I've heard that women aren't funny, which is bizarre to me, and I've been to auditions where they're just not interested in what you have to say." But feisty Reese has no qualms about standing her ground in such situations. She says, "I've finally reached a point where I feel I deserve an opinion. I've been working for 12 years now professionally. You just have to feel confident."

Entertainment analysts were blonde-sided at the box office over the weekend as a little $18-million comedy captured first place while the predicted winner, which cost an estimated $115 million to $135 million to make, came in fourth. Reese Witherspoon's Legally Blonde earned $20.4 million, beating out such heavyweights as The Score, starring Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando and Edward Norton, and the analysts' favorite, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The Score opened in second place with $19 million, while Final Fantasy, which had a strong mid-week debut on Wednesday, earned only $11.4 million. Analysts were at a loss to explain the poor showing of Fantasy."It just didn't capture the audience for whatever reason," Exhibitor Relations chief Paul Dergarabedian told Bloomberg News. "On paper it looked so good. I think it was the fact that there were no stars." In third place was last week's winner, Cats & Dogs, which earned $12 million.

Make no mistake, this is one funny movie. In fact, it's downright hilarious at times. But beyond the laughter it evokes, there's a flip side to the same coin. Because beyond all of the comedy there is some serious issues at the heart of this film, and anyone who's ever been subjected to trials and tribulations simply because they didn't happen to fit a certain mold, or coincide with someone else's opinions of the way things should be, will be able to identify with Elle's situation.

From the opening credits to the very last shot, this film never disappoints. It may be totally fantastic, slushy nonsense but the 'feel-good' factor is high and once again, Witherspoon gives a flawless performance. 

British Comedy Awards
Best Comedy Film

Casting Society of America, USA
Best Casting for Feature Film, Comedy

Costume Designers Guild Awards
Excellence in Costume Design for Film - Contemporary

Golden Globes, USA
Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

Kids' Choice Awards, USA
Favorite Female Movie Star, Reese Witherspoon

MTV Movie Awards
Best Female Performance, Reese Witherspoon
Best Movie

BMI Film & TV Awards
BMI Film Music, Rolfe Kent

Hollywood Makeup Artist and Hair Stylist Guild Awards
Best Contemporary Hair Styling - Feature

MTV Movie Awards
Best Comedic Performance, Reese Witherspoon
Best Dressed, Reese Witherspoon
Best Line, Reese Witherspoon

Teen Choice Awards
Film - Choice Movie of the Summer

Legally Blonde