Elle Review

Since its premiere 25 years ago, Legally Blonde has managed to stay in the pop culture discourse, spawning a sequel, a Broadway musical, an MTV series about casting the replacement Elle Woods for the Broadway musical, and now, a prequel TV series about just what happened to Elle when she was forced to move from Los Angeles to Seattle before her Junior year in high school. Now, you might be asking yourself, “Why do we need to know this particular slice of Elle Woods’ backstory?” After watching the series’ first season, I’m here to tell you that I have absolutely no idea why this show exists, other than it’s an attempt to capitalize on IP that has proven to have some serious staying power.

Because here’s the thing: There’s nothing in the series that matters to the character we meet in Legally Blonde. None of the new characters Elle meets with, befriends, or crushes on appear in the film. Nothing that happens in the series seems to impact who Elle will eventually become. In fact, this version of Elle we meet is pretty much the same Elle we know from Legally Blonde. She’s resourceful, she’s smarter than people give her credit for, she’s determined, and she has a really great heart and outlook on life. Yes, she comes on strong, but she’s the person you want to have in your corner for a myriad of reasons. But we learn literally nothing new about her as a character, save that she spent some time in Seattle in high school.

Which was one of the reasons this series – which is a perfectly fine high school dramedy (although the comedy piece of it is pretty weak and the jokes are mostly winking references to things that were around in 1995, the year the show is set) – is so frustrating. If Elle (played by Lexie Minetree, who looks and sounds just enough like Reese Witherspoon to make this version of Elle a convincing younger version of the character) was named Amber, and was a fish out of water from sunny California transplanted into grunge Seattle, the show would be exactly the same as it is. In fact, the specter of the Legally Blonde IP hanging like an albatross around the show’s neck starts to hurt the story more than help it as the season goes along. Because I found myself getting invested in the various relationships (more so than the season-long mystery of whether or not someone at the high school is embezzling funds), but would then remember this is an Elle Woods origin story and start to wonder just what the show was trying to tell us about her that we didn’t already know.

What the show does have on offer are a host of high school story tropes: a love triangle, two characters that seemingly hate each other but are really harboring feelings for one another, best friends who start to grow away from one another as their world views change. And at the center of it all, Elle, whose ultimate fate we already know. We know that none of these friends and love interests will seemingly matter to Elle when she graduates from UCLA – after she has become a full-fledged California girl once more – and heads to Harvard. We know just how capable she will grow up to be – and we certainly get a sense that this has been how Elle has operated for years. And now we know that she’s navigated being underestimated, mocked, and treated like an outcast before her time at Harvard and knows just how to navigate those treacherous waters and make the most of it. Which makes her actions in Legally Blonde a bit less impressive seeing as she’s done the exact same thing before (including befriending an older woman and trying to help her succeed).

So, the Elle Woods of it all doesn’t really matter all that much to the story being told. And while I did enjoy bits and pieces of the series (June Diane Raphael is great as Elle’s mom, while Chandler Kinney and Gabrielle Policano turn in great performances as Elle’s antagonist and new friend, respectively), there’s not enough here to justify the show’s existence as a prequel to Legally Blonde. The jokes aren’t that funny, the references to various mid-90s pop culture moments are more eye-roll-inducing than humorous, and the best things the show has going for it are its central performances that are hampered by plotlines that could be in any teen drama you’d find on the WB or CW of old. If you’re a huge Legally Blonde super fan, perhaps you’ll find something to like here. But Elle is just your run-of-the-mill teen drama with IP tangentially attached to it.

Elle premieres on Prime on July 1. All eight episodes were provided for review.