Victor Garber – The Sporadic Chronicles

“I just don’t think that Brooke could’ve done this. Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands, they just don’t.”
– Elle Woods

SYNOPSIS: Elle Woods, a fashionable sorority queen is dumped by her boyfriend. She decides to follow him to law school, while she is there she figures out that there is more to her than just looks. – via IMDB

Yes. The nostalgia man. The nostalgia. I cannot tell you how many times I watched the silly movie growing up, and I have no regrets. I decided the other day to trip down memory lane as rewatch Legally Blonde, and I am glad I did. It is a silly fluffy film for sure, but it has heart, some spunk, and quite a solid message to it, and all this makes for an enjoyable watch.

Reese Witherspoon is the perfect Elle Woods. Like seriously, she just pulls of that totally ridiculous blonde with all the aplomb you would hope that goes with it. She comes across as a totally shallow, brainless airhead, and yet she is not slow. She is just interested in other things – like makeup, beauty, fashion, hair care, and her handbag dog. I love how sassy she is, too, and she has some really priceless lines (like getting into Harvard not really being that hard xD). But when her asshat boyfriend, Warner Huntington III, rips the rug out from under her, Elle goes above and beyond to win him back, and instead proves to the world that she is more than the stereotypical dumb blonde.

Disclaimer: check your brain at the door before you head in for this. If you try to take this too seriously or apply this all as happening in real life, you are going to be in for a bad time. Reality suspension, to be sure. Now, back to the movie. Harvard changes Elle, and in a good way. She gains more confidence than ever before, and feels like she is useful and applies herself, she makes a difference. She also makes real friends that side, and watching Witherspoon’s Elle and Jennifer Coolidge’s Paulette together is something else altogether. I quite enjoyed the little awkward side story between Paulette and the delivery guy, and I thought that Luke Wilson’s Emmett was terribly sweet. I also really liked how much heart Legally Blonde brought to the table, and the strong messages peppered throughout it.

Legally Blonde is a charming, light, fluffy film that tackles some strong issues and actually has quite a good, solid message that it conveys. It also helps that it is really fun and has moments that will stick with you (I mean who is in a hurry to forget the ludicrous bend and snap?!). Also, it’s totally nostalgic, and that wins points for me. It’s such a chick flick, this cannot be denied, and is cute in that slightly sickening way, but you gotta love it.

“God himself could not sink this ship.”
– Cal Hockley

SYNOPSIS: A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind, but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic. – via IMDB

So I watched this on the way back from Italy, first time I have seen it in years. I still enjoyed it, and there were so many more aspects that I appreciated in the film seeing it now that I am older. The story of the Titanic always fascinated me, and even now, all these years later, it’s still immensely interesting. Now, back to the film, obviously I was on board with this because DiCaprio. I started a ridiculous obsession with him when this came out (I was still a rugrat when it hit, but come on, Jack Dawson). It was also where I became a fan of Kate Winslet, whatever she may think of her performance here. I loved this dramatic romantic film growing up, and it is still a good film. Watching it I realised that, as much as it was the love story between Jack and Rose, there was still the love story of the Titanic, so to speak (or love letter to the ship and her passengers, whichever way you wish to see it). So much time was spent showing us the destruction of the ship, the way she went down, fell apart, the whole katoot, and there were chunks of time that lapsed that did not feature Jack and Rose, and that was okay. Titanic features some solid performances, most notably (obviously) from DiCaprio and Winslet, but also Kathy Bates, Bernard Hill, and Victor Garber, among others. Titanic also spent a lot of time differentiating between the classes, which was not easy to watch, especially when it gets to locking second and third class passengers downstairs so that they could evacuate the first class passengers first, and how the first class passengers didn’t want to mix with lower classes. It made me sick to watch, and though times have changed, classism is still a major issue the world over. It is evident that Cameron was incredibly vested in his project, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching this again. Gosh, I will never forget the popularity of this film when it came out – and that is saying something, when a kid takes in how ridiculously huge a movie is. To this day, it is so immensely popular. Look, there are flaws with the film, for sure, but for the most part, it’s a pretty damn good movie, no matter how super hyped up it is. It is funny, sweet, sad, heart-wrenching, will make you angry, and will definitely keep you entertained from the off.