The Reese Witherspoon Sleeper Hit Rediscovered On Streaming
While the upcoming Greta Gerwig Barbie film has been the center of attention lately, streaming audiences have been rediscovering a very different fearless female protagonist who loves to dress in pink. According to Flix Patrol, the Reese Witherspoon classic Legally Blonde has landed in the top 10 on Amazon Prime. And if you’d like to see what the fuss is all about, or maybe just fall in love with it all over again, you can stream Legally Blonde at home today.
Reese Witherspoon’s beloved classic Legally Blonde is #10 on Amazon Prime Video’s streaming charts.
The plot of Legally Blonde is as straightforward as it is fantastic: Reese Witherspoon plays a spurned sorority girl who decides to get her boyfriend back in a very unconventional way. Since he broke up with her to go to Harvard Law School and generally pursue a more serious life, she decides to attend the same law school.
In this way, she hopes to win him back and prove, once and for all, that her frilly character can be much more serious than anyone gives her credit for.
Even though Reese Witherspoon’s character dreams of being taken more seriously, Legally Blonde is pretty much the opposite of a serious film. Instead, it’s a character-centric comedy that derives most of its humor from seeing very different characters clashing as they are taken out of their comfort zones.
For example, Witherspoon’s character loses none of her personality or her love of high fashion and immaculately coiffed hair, so she is a perpetual fish out of water in a storied university filled with staid and serious students.
To hear Brown tell it, she really was a very blonde student who didn’t let her law school studies detract from her love of rocking awesome fashion and getting beauty tips from Elle magazine.
While Reese Witherspoon plays the main character and does an amazing job, she is joined by an amazing cast, including future Emmy winner Jennifer Coolidge. The movie also features Luke Wilson and Selma Blair, and their every scene is a reminder of what amazing character actors they are.
And Matthew Davis plays the jackass ex-boyfriend perfectly, embodying the kind of character you love to hate whenever his smarmy face pops up onscreen.
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Legally Blonde is that it was based on a book by Amanda Brown, and Reese Witherspoon’s characters and struggles are based on Brown’s own experiences attending Stanford Law School.
Reese Witherspoon being his first choice is particularly notable since many other big names were being considered, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Charlize Theron, and Jennifer Love Hewitt.
To hear Brown tell it, she really was a very blonde student who didn’t let her law school studies detract from her love of rocking awesome fashion and getting beauty tips from Elle magazine. She didn’t fit in on the campus at all, and she began to write about these hilarious culture clashes in letters to her parents.
Eventually, Brown got the idea to write a book of essays, and she only held off on doing so because a literary agent advised her to create a novel instead. She had trouble shopping the eventual manuscript around until she had a great idea: submitting a completely pink manuscript instead.
This got the attention of publishers and Hollywood alike, and Legally Blonde director Robert Luketic only read a few pages of the film script before he became dead set on casting Reese Witherspoon as the main character.
Reese Witherspoon being his first choice is particularly notable since many other big names were being considered, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Charlize Theron, and Jennifer Love Hewitt. However, Luketic still had to convince the studio because, after they saw Witherspoon playing a kind of shrew in Election, executives were unsure if she could play a bubbly blonde with a heart of gold.
She eventually pulled out all the stops to convince them, including dressy sexy, using a fake accent, and answering countless questions about sorority life (something that, in reality, college dropout Witherspoon knew little about).
Obviously, Reese Witherspoon got the part, and she is arguably the main reason for the film’s immense success. The movie was a critical hit, and it currently has a 71 percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It also went on to gross $141.7 million against a budget of only $18 million, which is why MGM wasted no time greenlighting a sequel.
Honestly, we’d recommend that you check out Legally Blonde no matter what, as it remains one of the most iconic and influential comedies in recent decades. However, given that Hollywood actors like Reese Witherspoon have now joined writers on strike, it may be a long time before you have much new content to watch. Why not stream this film today and discover something that manages to be smart, hilarious, empowering, and yes…very, very pink?
