Legally Blonde: The Musical

(Book: 2/5, Movie: 3/5, Musical: 3+/5, Broadway cast album: 3/5, London cast album: 3+/5, Musical broadcast performance: 4/5) Yeah. So. Um. Some time ago, I watched Legally Blonde, the movie, mostly because I actually saw part of it being filmed (they used my campus for a couple of the shots, and so I'd be walking to class and see movie cameras everywhere). It was a fun movie -- not least the novelty of seeing my staid, geeky campus being used as a party school. Then through Pandora I started listening to the songs of the musical.

I finally sat down and listened to all the songs, and was intrigued enough to watch the whole thing on a youtube copy of the MTV airing of the musical with Laura Bell Bundy and Christian Borle and... um... really liked it. I'd go so far as to say I'm a little obsessed, if you couldn't tell from the plethora of rankings at the beginning... It's, well, like the movie: pink and fashionable sorority girl Elle (Bundy) isn't taken seriously by her boyfriend Warner, so she follows him to Harvard Law School to win him back... and then it turns out to be a riff on finding one's own place and voice in the world on one's own terms, and not letting a guy dictate one's terms.

The musical's big strength, I think (which it mostly shares with the movie), is that it never really takes itself seriously. (Indeed, "Seriously," one of the early songs, is also one of the best ones for how it very much pokes fun at the generic love ballad.) I mean, let's face it, this is a musical where the heroine gets into Harvard Law by doing a dance number accompanied by a huge poster of her and her ex-boyfriend, after which the old stodgy professors on the admissions committee join in the dance number. Yeah. It's a delicate structure of bouncy absurdities that, if it ever tried to take itself seriously, would fall down catastrophically, but it doesn't. (There are frequent parts where the characters are taken seriously, which is all to the good -- it wouldn't have any emotional depth otherwise -- but never where the musical takes itself as a musical seriously.)

( Cut mostly for length, because it turns out I want to pontificate more about <i>Legally Blonde: The Musical</i> than you could have imagined, or than you want to read: energy, analysis of the music, singing vs. acting, album vs. performance, character development, compassion, feminism, and stereotypes. Shut up. I had to get this out, and now I'm all right and sane again, I think. Mostly. )

I also thought about it some and realized that I think my obsession with this musical is my version of the Twilight phenomenon. By which I mean: I understand why teenage girls love Twilight, but I also know a surprising number of middle-aged women with husbands and children who love it, including level-headed women who would be the last people I'd think would enjoy vampire love. After reading it, I decided it was because it took you back to when you were giddy-crushing/falling-in-love with someone, and I guess it is, for these people, a wonderfully nostalgic time to remember. Well. Twilight didn't do it for me, at all, but apparently, even though I have nothing in common with a sorority girl who goes to law school, I love being taken back to a time where I got to be really good friends with a guy, that later turned into romantic interest (Hi, D! And, for that matter, S!) And in the context of learning one can grow in directions one never really thought about, or thought one could grow in. Huh. How about that.

(Also. Um. Er. Would any of you be willing to, um, beta? I KNOW. Shut up.)