Elle: Legally Blonde prequel without the candyfloss fizz of the film

“Nobody asked for a prequel to ‘Legally Blonde’,” said Anita Singh in The Telegraph, but here it is, because “ker-ching! – there is money to be made from rinsing the original”.

The result is “Elle” (Amazon Prime Video), “a cute but pointless series” in which we meet Elle Woods as a 16-year-old high schooler in 1990s Beverly Hills. She’s living her best life, until her parents announce that they have to move to rainy Seattle. So Elle is transplanted to the “epicentre of grunge”, where her “Barbie-pink outfits and perky demeanour are greeted with horror” by her hoodie-wearing peers. It is “a re-run of the film” – but “not half as funny”.

Lacks ‘fizzy dialogue’

Stretched over eight episodes, it sorely lacks the sharpness of the 2001 movie, said Adam White in The Independent, as well as its stacked supporting cast (Jennifer Coolidge, Selma Blair etc.), “fizzy dialogue” and comic set pieces.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

The TV show also has a large plot hole: presumably, in the second season, Elle (Lexi Minetree) will undergo a “sociopolitical lobotomy” to explain why, in the film, she rocks up to Harvard so shocked by the way she’s greeted despite her experience in Seattle.

‘Slick nostalgia fix’

The series is an odd concept, said Carol Midgley in The Times: a spin-off of a film adored by a generation that is now well into middle age, but seemingly aimed at teenagers.

Still, it’s really not bad. Minetree looks like the film’s star, Reese Witherspoon, and captures some of what made her so brilliant in the part; and it has some good lines. It’s probably not a show for “a fogey like me”, but this “slick nostalgia fix” is good fun.