{"id":900849,"date":"2026-06-29T13:26:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T13:26:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/900849\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T13:26:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T13:26:20","slug":"elle-review-prime-video-prequel-feels-forced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/900849\/","title":{"rendered":"Elle Review: Prime Video Prequel Feels Forced"},"content":{"rendered":"

When \u201cLegally Blonde\u201d came out in 2001, it blew up the box office. Grossing about six times its $18 million budget and spawning both a sequel (\u201cLegally Blonde 2: Red, White, & Blonde\u201d) and a Broadway musical, not to mention innumerable Elle Woods Halloween costumes, \u201cLegally Blonde\u201d has become a certified cultural touchstone.<\/p>\n

It was also the movie that \u2014 for all intents and purposes \u2014 launched Reese Witherspoon\u2019s career. She\u2019d had notable turns in films like \u201cCruel Intentions\u201d and \u201cElection,\u201d but \u201cLegally Blonde\u201d was the project that made Witherspoon a certified star. And while she\u2019s starred in dozens of movies and TV shows since, she\u2019s always held a public torch for \u201cBlonde\u201d and for Woods.<\/p>\n

So it was understandably exciting in 2024 when it was announced that Witherspoon and her Hello Sunshine production shingle would produce a prequel for Prime Video. Titled \u201cElle,\u201d<\/a> the series is set in the mid \u201890s, when Woods is a junior in high school. After her plastic surgeon dad (Tom Everett Scott) bungles a Hollywood starlet\u2019s nose job, her family flees town to lay low in Seattle.<\/p>\n

\"elle-tom-everett-scott-lexi-minetree-june-diane-raphael-prime-video\"Tom Everett Scott, Lexi Minetree and June Diane Raphael in \u201cElle.\u201d (Prime Video)<\/p>\n

It goes about as well as you\u2019d expect in the beginning, with the pink and sunny Elle (Lexi Minetree) facing cultural shock as she knuckles down on her new grey, rainy life. At Rainier West High, her fellow students hate her try-hard attitude and general L.A. vibe, claiming they\u2019d all sooner die than visit California \u2014 something that seems hard to believe given the show is set during the heyday of both \u201cBeverly Hills: 90210\u201d and \u201cMelrose Place.\u201d When Elle tries to fit in with the grunge-loving student body, cringily bedazzling a Nirvana t-shirt with little heart sequins, it fails the student stink test almost immediately.<\/p>\n

While the idea of Elle Woods being thrust into mid \u201890s Seattle is cute enough on paper, in practice it feels thin and forced. \u201cLegally Blonde\u201d was set in a bit of a fantasy world, where reality is heightened and people are found guilty of murder because of their perm maintenance routines, but it at least all felt like campy fun. In \u201cElle,\u201d Seattle is a dour hellhole full of gloomy teens \u2014 none of whom seem aware that Kurt Cobain died over a year before this show is supposed to start.<\/p>\n

Elle finds her people eventually, though, bonding first with high school secretary Donna (Amy Pietz) before falling in with kind but odd outsiders Dustin (Zac Looker) and Liz (Gabrielle Policano.) She even gets a crush on a kind but bland cross country athlete (Jacob Moskovitz), only to find out that he\u2019s already dating Shannon (Danielle Chand), a fashion-loving senior she bonds with spontaneously after a tough first week. Elle also keeps in touch with a friend back home (Jessica Belkin), who comes to visit midseason if only to remind Elle of how much Seattle has supposedly changed her.<\/p>\n

\"elle-lexi-minetree-chandler-kinney-prime-video\"Lexi Minetree and Chandler Kinney in \u201cElle.\u201d (Prime Video)<\/p>\n

If that sounds like a plot point you\u2019ve heard before in other \u201cfish out of water\u201d stories, it\u2019s because you have. So much of \u201cElle\u2019s\u201d plot is reheated pap, including plot points that are direct ripoffs of (or references to, if you\u2019re being generous) the original plot of \u201cLegally Blonde.\u201d Teen Elle is tricked into attending a party she\u2019s scandalously underdressed for, a la the legal mixer in the original film. She also susses out a crime based on a fashion don\u2019t, makes a video documentary to apply for a prestigious internship, and wins over a bitchy fellow student just by using kindness and perseverance.<\/p>\n

\u201cElle\u2019s\u201d plot isn\u2019t all high school drama, though. There\u2019s also mild legal intrigue, including a principal (Matt Oberg) suspected of embezzling school funds, some mild marital strife between Elle\u2019s parents (Tom Everett Scott and June Diane Raphael), and whatever\u2019s going on with school superintendent and mayoral candidate Dean Wilson (the late James Van Der Beek in his final role.)<\/p>\n

Despite a bang-up supporting cast, though, almost every episode of \u201cElle\u201d seems to drag. Each episode seems needlessly tedious, running between 45-60 minutes long when they should be a quick and fun 30. Beats that are telegraphed from Episode 1 drag out endlessly and even fun bits, like the back-and-forth banter between Elle and her mom is marred by an almost comical amount of product placement. In fact, within the first 10 minutes of the show, there are hamfisted references to L\u2019Oreal, Nexus hair products, Dove soaps and Ferrero Rocher. It\u2019s oppressive, awkward and unbearable, especially considering how ably other Prime Video shows (like \u201cOff Campus\u201d) seem to have dealt with their placements. With a second season already ordered, though, it\u2019s clear that Prime Video believes in the show (and its profitability) enough to give it a chance.<\/p>\n

\u201cLegally Blonde\u201d was fun, fresh and brilliantly paced, but \u201cElle\u201d is dour, boring and tedious. It\u2019s unfortunate, really: It\u2019s clear that Witherspoon, Hello Sunshine and showrunners Laura Kittrell and Caroline Dries love the source material, but perhaps by attempting to capture lightning in a bottle once again they\u2019ve only served to dim Elle\u2019s shine.<\/p>\n

\u201cElle\u201d premieres Wednesday on Prime Video.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"sam-reid-lexi-minetree-aaron-pierre-amc-prime-video-hbo\"\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When \u201cLegally Blonde\u201d came out in 2001, it blew up the box office. Grossing about six times its…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":900850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[28],"tags":[2431,225823,171,298931,53,8266,30940,67,132,68,4183],"class_list":["post-900849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-amazon","tag-elle","tag-entertainment","tag-hello-sunshine","tag-movies","tag-prime-video","tag-reese-witherspoon","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-what-to-watch"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116833628488411514","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}