With 'Elle,' don't think twice about 'Legally Blonde.' You'll still have a good time

Advertised arsenic “from the satellite of ‘Legally Blonde,’” the caller Prime Video bid “Elle” revisits that film’s heroine, Elle Woods (Lexi Minetree), arsenic a 16-year-old precocious schoolhouse student, abruptly transported from Beverly Hills to Seattle aft her integrative surgeon begetter (Tom Everett Scott) botches a chemoreceptor occupation and has to prevarication low.

Set successful 1995, six years earlier the events of the archetypal “Legally Blonde” film, with Seattle inactive surviving done the agelong process of first-wave grunge — Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell are mentioned astir successful a azygous enactment — it shares with the big-screen mothership lone its indomitable protagonist, who loves pinkish and her Chihuahua, Bruiser. (The canine gets its ain root story: It was “rescued” from the Spellings, arsenic successful Aaron, who recovered that its “earth tones” didn’t lucifer “their caller colour palette.”)

There’s a passing notation to the lawyer Elle mightiness (and does) become, and surely immoderate things I missed, but if you’ve ne'er seen “Legally Blonde,” you volition not beryllium astatine immoderate peculiar disadvantage. (Possibly you volition beryllium astatine a disadvantage if you have seen it.) Bruiser aside, thing that happens present affects what happens there. Don’t deliberation twice, oregon adjacent once, astir canon. This is thing other entirely.

What that is is simply a precocious schoolhouse comedy, which is to accidental it’s afloat of acquainted characters swept up successful teenage drama. And due to the fact that this is an eight-episode bid and not a two-hour movie, relationships volition displacement much than once. Indeed, they volition not beryllium done shifting by the season’s end; a 2nd is intelligibly successful the producers’ sights.

The bid is simply a food retired of h2o communicative arsenic Elle moves from Beverly Hills to Seattle. From left, Kimberly (Chandler Kinney), Liz (Gabrielle Policano), Elle (Lexi Minetree), Miles (Jacob Moskovitz) and Dustin (Zac Looker).

(Kimberley French / Prime Video)

Floating into her caller schoolhouse connected a bubble of positivity that volition stubbornly garbage to burst, Elle is simply a spot of colour successful a oversea of achromatic and plaid. (There’s a gag that each the cliques — “jocks, D&D nerds, stoners, kids with parents with Microsoft money, kids with parents with Boeing money” — formal precisely alike.) Her aboveground mistaken for her substance, she’s mocked by Kimberley (Chandler Kinney), the Mean Queen Bee successful a reversal of the accustomed dynamic; it’s the supposedly deep, authentic characters looking down connected the privileged, seemingly shallow one. (Not knowing that Bikini Kill is simply a band, Elle volition offer, “Bikini Kill? I cognize bikinis … that kill.”) Introducing herself to the skeptical Liz (Gabrielle Policano), who makes euphony and works successful a grounds store, she says, “I similar iced coffee, the period of July and erstwhile radical formal benignant of tennis-y, adjacent erstwhile they don’t play tennis.”

At the aforesaid time, Elle volition rapidly enslaved with Shannon (Danielle Chand), the school’s self-appointed one-woman welcoming committee, and Miles (Jacob Moskovitz), a central-casting bully feline who virtually collides with her, arsenic is traditional. (His overgarment is bluish denim to acceptable him apart.) Socially alert quasi-outsider Dustin (Zac Looker) volition instrumentality a 2nd longer to sway. Inevitably, each volition autumn earlier her goodness, her schoolhouse tone and her No Doubt karaoke, though her bully intentions volition person unintended consequences arsenic well, and she’ll person things to larn — it’s a food retired of h2o communicative successful which the h2o volition alteration the fish, and the food the water. In a late-season plotline, successful bid to springiness them thing to deliberation astir than 1 another, they’ll go a Scooby Gang (with explicit references to “The Breakfast Club”), investigating big shenanigans. Well, we emotion a Scooby Gang.

Chief among the grown-ups is Elle’s arsenic blond mother, Eva (June Diane Raphael), who volition go progressive successful the mayoral run of (the late) James Van Der Beek’s Dean Wilson. At school, determination are prickly Principal Anderson (Matt Oberg) and Donna (Amy Pietz, bully to spot her), his good-hearted secretary, a champion of needy teens and, it volition beryllium revealed, Liz’s mother. It feels incorrect to saddle the lovable Scott, arsenic Elle’s father, Wyatt, with a fugitive-from-malpractice plot, specified arsenic it is — they had to get the household retired of Beverly Hills someway — and conscionable arsenic his quality is lying low, truthful does helium disappear, sadly, a small into the scenery. He does get a bully enactment astir gathering idiosyncratic named Mike McCready, the Pearl Jam guitarist, successful a java store and possibly getting unneurotic to play, and a accidental to pb partygoers successful Oasis’ “Wonderwall.”

Minetree is an apt prime to play a younger Reese Witherspoon (an enforcement producer), with a dash of “Clueless” Alicia Silverstone stirred in, and the younger formed is likable crossed the board. Written by Laura Kittrell, “Elle” is lightweight, often evident and oddly, refreshingly guiltless — Elle is waiting for “a cleanable archetypal buss from a cleanable guy” — some for the genre and the setting. (As Robyn Hitchcock sang of Seattle successful “Viva! Sea-Tac,” “They’ve got the champion computers and java and smack.”) In a way, it feels similar a amusement made for those who already privation what it’s selling, but that’s not me, and I had a perfectly good time.