With “Elle,” Prime Video has set out to give “Legally Blonde” heroine Elle Woods her own origin story… what, like it’s hard? Well, maybe it is harder than we thought, actually, based on the first three episodes I’ve seen.
We first met Elle back in 2001 in the big-screen comedy “Legally Blonde,” with Reese Witherspoon starring as the plucky blonde who stunned everyone at Harvard Law School by revealing she had a brilliant legal mind to go along with her bubbly Valley Girl personality. The movie was a big hit and spawned a sequel and a Broadway musical, but none of the offshoots truly recaptured the spark of the original. And Prime Video’s new prequel “Elle” (premiering this Wednesday) suffers the same fate: It’s cute enough, with some clever moments and solid performances, but it steers away from what made “Legally Blonde” exceptional in favor of tired TV teen drama clichés we’ve seen too many times before.
We head back to 1995 to find Elle (played here by Lexi Minetree) preparing to enter her junior year of high school in L.A. (Opening with Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” is a nice touch.) But after her dad (Tom Everett Scott) hits a career bump, Elle and her family are forced to move to — gasp! — rainy Seattle. Putting Elle Woods in the grunge capital of the world is a smart idea, recreating the fish-out-of-water dynamic of the original film. At her new high school, Elle is like Malibu Barbie attending the Goth school from “Wednesday”: a bright pink cupcake in a sea of pale, morose faces. But she eventually manages to find new friends… and a new love interest, too, of course.
The ’90s stereotypes get a bit overplayed
“Elle” is packed with fun ’90s nostalgia — when Elle finds herself trapped in the middle of a rowdy mosh pit, she complains, “This doesn’t seem sanitary!” — but the era-specific stereotypes are a bit overplayed, too. Every student at Elle’s new high school is a mopey, flannel-clad cynic, without exception, which doesn’t ring true. (Even the cheerleaders are Goth.) Surely Elle would find at least one Cosmopolitan-reading kindred spirit in Seattle, right? Plus, the students have an overly modern social consciousness that doesn’t fit the time period. Being gay certainly wasn’t accepted in 1995 like it is now. And did anyone even know what a vegan was back then?
There are welcome shades of “Clueless” and “The Brady Bunch Movie” in here, with Elle as the sunny optimist fighting back against ’90s angst. (“Insecure” alum Laura Kittrell and “The Vampire Diaries” veteran Caroline Dries serve as showrunners.) But there are times when “Elle” sinks into “The Carrie Diaries” territory, giving us an elaborate backstory for a beloved character that we never really needed or asked for. (Yes, we get to see how Elle first met her tiny pooch Bruiser, and I’d bet we’ll see her learn the “bend and snap” at some point.) It works better as a comedy than a drama, too: The dramatic beats are clunky, and it leans too often into YA drama tropes like the inevitable love triangle.
Elle doesn’t transcend the genre like Legally Blonde did
Lexi Minetree certainly looks the part as Elle, and she has some nice moments, but her Elle falls short of the magic that Reese Witherspoon conjured up in “Legally Blonde.” Witherspoon was a comedic force of nature in this role, and Minetree can’t quite capture that lightning-in-a-bottle quality. June Diane Raphael, though, is a big highlight as Elle’s mom Eva, still happily living in her Bel-Air bubble no matter where she’s geographically located. (While objecting to Elle wearing an unflattering turtleneck, she declares, “The neck is the pedestal to the face.”)
Now please understand: I’m not complaining that a show like this is cute and fluffy. It should be cute and fluffy! But while “Legally Blonde” transcended the rom-com genre, “Elle” merely follows it. The key to the original film’s greatness was watching Elle outsmart her snooty classmates, but we don’t get anything that unexpected or satisfying in “Elle.” There’s a certain spunk missing here as well. Even when things got tough for Elle in “Legally Blonde,” she always found a way to flourish, and it takes too long for this Elle to flourish. In the end, we’re left with an uninspired piece of IP nostalgia bait that is mostly harmless — but pretty forgettable, too.
THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Prime Video’s “Legally Blonde” prequel “Elle” has some clever moments, but it lacks the magic that made the Reese Witherspoon original great.