I had heard rumors of Broadway creating a musical for Legally Blonde about a year ago from some of my fellow Drama classmates. At first, I wondered how in the world that would turn out, since they really had one choreographed “dance”: the bend and snap. Nobody even sang one note (that I can remember of) in the movie. So how were they going to bring the story of a blonde sorority-fashion-boy-crazy-girl to stage?
On Sunday, I sat in the living room while my dad flipped through 70+ channels in search of finding the one thing that would, hopefully, be something new and refreshing on television. Just when he was losing all hope and was about to watch another run of Guess Who? he passed MTV. Of course MTV didn’t have a music video playing (because apparently they’ve long since forgotten why they started the network in the first place) and surprisingly they didn’t have another reality show on. Instead, I caught a glimpse of Legally Blonde: The Musical! I had him stop and the rest of the evening was dedicated to it.
The first song I heard, I was a bit iffy on the entire thing. But by the time the musical ended, I was applauding with the filmed audience, as if I was actually there at the Palace Theatre. Lauren Bell Bundy captured Elle Woods as lovingly and fun as Reese Witherspoon. However, I’m going to have to side with the musical when it comes to the Emmett and Elle relationship. They were so much closer in the musical and the two (Emmett played by Christian Bore) seemed to have a bit of better chemistry than their large screen counterpart. Though I knew what was going to happen to the two because I had seen the movie, I was still cheering when the two got together and sad when she almost left him.
Some of my favorite scores were “Whipped into Shape”, a song sung by Nikki Snelson (Brooke) who was the woman on trial. It was amazing to see her workout video being done because it was an awesome choreographed dance featuring jump ropes. At one point, she stops in mid jump and the jump rope freezes in mid-air. I’m still not sure what kind of jump rope they used (it looks like the plastic beaded ones from school, but ours weren’t that rigid) and it sort of inspired me to jump rope again (I haven’t started yet). Another fun song was Orfeh’s (Paulette) “Ireland”. In her reprise, the entire cast did a small river dance, which was really cute. But, my favorite song, simply because it made me laugh the most was “There! Right There!” The song is about the defendants wondering if the pool boy is actually gay or not.
Overall, a musical worth watching simply because it’s so fun! I need to find out when MTV is going to put a rerun of it because I missed the first 5 songs, which is about the first 1/2 hour or so. But, I’m glad MTV did show it, I think they should show more musicals. Maybe one day, Sunday evenings will be musical night, or I might be hoping too much…
September 14
