Blondes may have more fun, but are they taken seriously? The question forms the premise of Legally Blonde, based on the novel of the same title by Amanda Brown, a variation on the plot of Pushkin’s Eugen Onegin with cartoonized characters. Indeed, one particular blonde, Elle Woods (played by Reese Witherspoon), has more fun and insists on being taken seriously. Despite being a straight-A college student in Los Angeles, majoring in fashion merchandising, Elle upon graduation expects to marry fellow student Warner Huntington III (played by Matthew Davis). Although she is from a wealthy Bel-Air family, she represents new wealth, and she so overdresses that she appears to be a clown. What Warner is looking for is someone from an East Coast elite family, such as the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts. At a dinner when she anticipates a marriage proposal, Warner instead tells her that the relationship must end so that he can fulfill his destiny as a Harvard Law School graduate who will take a seat in the United States Senate that has long been occupied by the men of his family. After a week of self-pity and chocolate candies for being jilted, Elle snaps out of her depression with a plan true to her upbeat personality–She will go to Harvard Law, despite her father’s warning that she will meet those who are “boring, ugly, and serious,” to prove her worthiness to Warner. Accordingly, she videotapes a daffy application essay in a bikini with a lot of pizzazz, and she studies hard (with the help of her sorority sisters) in order to receive a high score on the LSAT. The Harvard Law admission committee, consisting of all white males, decides to admit her after the criterion of diversity is trotted out in her defense despite the obvious “dumb blonde” stereotype in the campy tape. Upon arrival at Harvard, she runs into Warner, who exhibits a girlfriend from an aristocratic family, Vivian Kensington (played by Selma Blair). But the rest of the students, including a Lesbian and a dork whom women avoid, assume that she is dumb because she is blonde and wears ultrastylish clothes rather than the usual conservative garb. Nevertheless, she studies hard and impresses her professors. Professor Callahan (played by Victor Garber) is so enchanted by her performance in class that he selects her to be a summer intern in his law firm. The case assigned to the interns involves a defendant on trial for murdering her husband; since the defendant turns out to be a sorority sister who graduated four years before Elle, the two quickly establish rapport. During the trial, Elle spots a clue that a key witness for the prosecution has perjured himself, and the law professor’s partner Emmett Richmond (played by Luke Wilson) conducts an interrogation to discredit the witness’ credibility. Impressed with her intuition, the law professor offers Elle a better position in exchange for sex. Indignantly, she refuses and resigns from the internship project. However, the defendant fires the law professor as her defense attorney and hires Elle, who has not passed the bar; when the law professor objects, the judge rules in favor of the change of attorneys when Richmond steps forward to serve as her legal co-counsel. In her questioning of the defendant’s stepdaughter, Elle again saves the day when the murder victim’s daughter claims that she was taking a shower soon after receiving a permanent, whereupon fashion-freak Elle declares that any woman would know better, resulting in a confession in open court by the stepdaughter. The defendant is released, the stepdaughter is arrested, Elle spurns Warner (as does Vivian), and she makes a valedictory address at the graduation ceremony, stating various truisms about self-respect. Legally Blonde, directed by Robert Luketic, thus is a farce with plenty of laughs and many delightful subplots, especially the love affair of manicurist Paulette (played by Jennifer Coolidge) and how Elle gets two women to fight for a date with the dork. The film makes such points as that men can be jerks, blondes should be taken seriously, women’s intelligence is underrated, appearances deceive, and women can break through glass ceilings just by honestly being themselves. For those who believe that the plot is totally absurd, I can recall a famous female attorney named Gladys Cowles Root, who defended gays entrapped by Los Angeles Police Department officers during the 1950s; appearing in court each day with a new hat color and a matching outlandish fashion outfit, she so distracted juries that she never lost a case. But she never pretended to be a bushy-tailed airhead. MH