{"id":520175,"date":"2026-07-01T16:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T16:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/520175\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T16:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T16:12:09","slug":"elle-review-legally-blonde-prequel-is-a-well-executed-rehash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/520175\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Elle’ Review: ‘Legally Blonde’ Prequel Is a Well-Executed Rehash"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe Amazon Prime Video show \u201cElle<\/a>\u201d is billed as a prequel series to the 2001 novel turned hit movie \u201cLegally Blonde<\/a>,\u201d but its eight episodes play more like a remake. Sure, \u201cElle\u201d turns back the clock to 1995, when its title character \u2014\u00a0the bubbly, pink-obsessed lawyer-to-be made iconic by a young Reese Witherspoon \u2014\u00a0was a rising junior at Beverly Hills High. Yet the arc of \u201cElle\u201d hews so closely to the trajectory our heroine takes in the original film that it\u2019s hard to believe one person underwent the same maturation process twice over, unless she entered Harvard Law with a bad case of amnesia. Better, then, to view \u201cElle\u201d as a kind of alternate universe tale where Elle Woods (Lexi Minetree) simply had her epiphanies a few years earlier. That way, it\u2019s easier to appreciate what this bildungsroman does well, which is a fair amount.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is a ceiling on these accomplishments, though. Created by Laura Kittrell (\u201cInsecure\u201d) and executive produced by Witherspoon through her banner Hello Sunshine, \u201cElle\u201d is content to live within the shadow of its inspiration. Every chapter takes its name from an enduring line in screenwriters Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith\u2019s script, like \u201cWhoever Said Orange Is the New Pink Is Seriously Deranged\u201d or \u201cWhat, Like It\u2019s Hard?\u201d This device has the unfortunate effect of highlighting how the joke writing on \u201cElle,\u201d while capable and entertaining \u2014 \u201cI don\u2019t run, but I do walk with conviction!\u201d \u2014\u00a0is coloring within lines someone else already drew. The show positions itself to introduce a generation of young women already watching Amazon due to YA hits like \u201cThe Summer I Turned Pretty\u201d to the \u201cLegally Blonde\u201d ethos, aided by a lead performance from Minetree that perfectly channels Witherspoon\u2019s girly-girl pep. But \u201cElle\u201d doesn\u2019t meaningfully alter or elaborate upon the themes first explored by author Amanda Brown, because it isn\u2019t trying to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat said, \u201cElle\u201d fulfills its own (blonde) ambitions, smartly selecting a new pond in which this aged-down Elle can be a fish out of water. Rather than following a boyfriend to law school of her own volition, the show\u2019s protagonist is forced to move to Seattle when her father Wyatt (Tom Everett Scott), a plastic surgeon, botches a nose job, making his name mud west of La Brea. Forced to abandon her three-point plan for a perfect junior year, Elle, Wyatt and her mother Eva (June Diane Raphael) relocate to rainy Seattle, where Elle\u2019s impeccable taste in designer bags is more disdained than appreciated. The change in location also keeps \u201cElle\u201d from hewing too close to \u201cClueless,\u201d the Big Kahuna of media built around a willful teen girl in mid-\u201990s L.A. Elle\u2019s best friend Madison (Jessica Belkin) has a car phone that\u2019s just as impressive as Cher\u2019s computer-powered closet. (The Pacific Northwest instead invokes \u201c10 Things I Hate About You,\u201d another Lutz-Smith collaboration.)<\/p>\n

\n\tUnlike the movie, which was contemporary to its time, \u201cElle\u201d is a period piece, laying on its cultural references thick and with a deliberately, almost parodically broad brush. In this Seattle, everyone looks like an extra from \u201cSingles,\u201d stomping down the halls of Rainier West High School in plaid flannels and Doc Martens while debating the relative merits of Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain. The dynamic isn\u2019t exactly the same as a sorority sister among aspiring attorneys, but it\u2019s very close: serious, socially conscious Seattleites look down on Elle\u2019s hyper-feminine aesthetic; Elle is appalled by her classmates\u2019 contempt for consumerism and visible effort; both sides have something to learn from one another. Seattle just has the added bonus of a ready-made soundtrack, a collection of grunge-era hits led by Garbage\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m Only Happy When It Rains,\u201d the semi-ironic theme song.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tElle\u2019s new peers are a tough crowd for her talents of accessorizing and quoting Cosmo from memory. Ingratiating herself with the popular crowd in California was a matter of perseverance; in Washington, queen bee Kimberly (Chandler Kinney) clocks Elle as a \u2014 gasp! \u2014\u00a0poser for the sin of wearing a Nirvana T-shirt to fit in. (Though she still decks it out in hearts.) Record store employee Liz (Gabrielle Pelicano) is reflexively suspicious of Elle\u2019s upbeat enthusiasm. Student activist Dustin (Zac Looker), doubtless just a few years from participating in the WTO protests, is the most open-minded to Elle\u2019s charms, but only once she joins forces with him to advocate for underpaid school staffers. Dustin is down for the cause; Elle just wants to help the principal\u2019s secretary Donna (Amy Pietz), the only other person at school willing to talk horoscopes with her.<\/p>\n

\n\tDonna\u2019s plight becomes the onramp to a proto-legal subplot about potentially stolen funds that eventually gets Elle in full cross-examination mode. Despite an unnecessary escalation of stakes about halfway through the season, the teen investigator mode is where \u201cElle\u201d most accurately channels the spirit \u201cLegally Blonde,\u201d plus some high school-specific flourishes like a \u201cBreakfast Club\u201d-themed detention episode. The storyline prompts sympathy and growth on both sides of the divide: Elle\u2019s counterparts realize they\u2019re wrong to dismiss fuchsia and pom-poms as inherently unworthy, while Elle herself starts to wonder if \u201cI really am the vapid L.A. girl they all think I am.\u201d A quarter century after the original \u201cLegally Blonde,\u201d the distinction between style and substance is still worth exploring.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cElle\u201d fares less well with the family dynamics that come with a lead character who still lives in her parents\u2019 house. Wyatt is a bit of a non-entity who fades into the background; Raphael is a wonderful comic performer who still comes off a little too grounded and earthy to be Elle\u2019s supposed clone before her daughter starts to assert some independence. (An Anna Faris or younger Kristen Chenoweth type feels closer to the mark.) The elder Woods woman gets shoehorned into the main story through an underdeveloped thread about volunteering for the mayoral campaign of school superintendent Dean Wilson (James Van Der Beek in his final role<\/a>), though it\u2019s possible \u201cElle\u201d was working around the schedule and abilities of an actor who went public with his cancer diagnosis in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the other hand, it\u2019s not a coincidence that the weakest parts of \u201cElle\u201d are the ones that are also the most unique to it in comparison with \u201cLegally Blonde.\u201d (In addition to the Woods household, there\u2019s a romantic interest who never feels like more than a box to be checked, especially when he isn\u2019t serving the function of luring Elle away from her comfort zone.) This is a show that\u2019s quite comfortable working from its inspiration, and much less so when it\u2019s attempting to forge its own path. That last part isn\u2019t quite in the Elle Woods spirit, but \u201cElle\u201d gets close enough.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll eight episodes of \u201cElle\u201d are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Amazon Prime Video show \u201cElle\u201d is billed as a prequel series to the 2001 novel turned hit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[86685,146,85,46,110589,411],"class_list":["post-520175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-elle","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-legally-blonde","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}