Legally Blonde (2001) on Netflix
Elle Woods expects a proposal from Warner Huntington III. Instead he ends things, saying she is not serious enough for the life he plans. She follows him to Harvard Law School.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.5/10293,396 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes72%
Trailer
Plot summary
Elle Woods is president of her sorority at California University of Los Angeles and the girlfriend of Warner Huntington III. She believes a proposal is coming; Warner, who plans a career as a senator, tells her she is not serious enough, and the relationship ends. Elle decides to earn the same credentials, studies for the law school admission test, scores a near-perfect 179, and is accepted at Harvard Law School, where Warner is enrolled. In her first semester she finds her East Coast classmates wary of her, learns that Warner is engaged to Vivian Kensington, and befriends Paulette Bonafonté, a local manicurist. Told she is not smart enough, Elle sets out to prove her grasp of the subject.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Legally Blonde (2001)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Several major actresses were floated to star as Elle Woods, including Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alicia Silverstone, Katherine Heigl, Christina Applegate, Milla Jovovich and Jennifer Love Hewitt, before director Robert Luketic settled on Reese Witherspoon, saying he wanted someone with "gravitas and brains."
- Christina Applegate turned down the lead role in Legally Blonde because she thought it would be too similar to her sitcom Married... with Children, a decision she later said she regretted.
- Producer Marc Platt at one point wanted to cast pop star Britney Spears as Elle Woods, but screenwriter Karen McCullah talked him out of it after Spears's appearance on Saturday Night Live.
- After Reese Witherspoon played Tracy Flick in Election, MGM's studio head considered her "repellent" and would not approve her for Legally Blonde, with her manager reporting that the executive believed she really was her Election character, and she was told to dress sexy for the audition.
- The film's famous "bend and snap" scene almost never existed: screenwriter Karen McCullah Lutz pitched the idea during a brainstorming session at a Los Angeles bar, and co-writer Kirsten Smith invented the move on the spot, later calling it "a completely drunken moment in a bar."
- Both USC and Stanford refused to let Legally Blonde use their names on screen, with USC's filming coordinator Elijah May citing concerns about sorority stereotyping, so the filmmakers invented the fictional college CULA instead.
SPOILER
Legally Blonde originally ended with a courthouse kiss between Elle and Emmett followed by a jump ahead to a now-blonde Vivian, but after test audiences rejected that ending the writers and producers agreed in the theater lobby that a new conclusion was needed, leading to the graduation scene used in the final film.- An early cut idea for Legally Blonde had Elle and her friends chasing down Judge Judy Sheindlin for a cameo in her Harvard admissions video; when Sheindlin couldn't do it, co-star Alanna Ubach suggested casting Reese Witherspoon's then-husband Ryan Phillippe in a rewritten male version of the part, an idea Witherspoon vetoed.
