Legally Blonde

The movie is about discrimination, not against colored people but this time against blonde girls. It is about stereotyping and judging people with appearances using first impressions. What I'm saying now reminds me of the novel Pride and Prejudice and how it was going to be named at first First Impressions by the writer.

In Legally Blonde, we know from the start that she is smart. This is clearly shown in the store when she goes to buy a dress and the woman in the store stereotypes her into the "dumb blonde" category. She surprises the woman by meticulously showing her awareness and knowledge of the dress the woman wanted to trick her into buying. This scene is there to clearly demonstrate her cleverness and to show us that she is really smart. It also shows us how other people are stereotyping her just because she is blonde.

She goes to Harvard Law School and gets in contact with a professor whom kicks her out in her first class. Her ex boyfriend's fiancee was also a reason for her being kicked out. Later in the movie, we find that this professor whom kicked her out in her first lecture actually becomes the reason for her deciding to continue her studies at law school and not quite as she was going to. Her ex boyfriend's fiancee also turns towards her gradually and they become good to one another. This plays on the same theme that first impressions should not be final judgements and can change to the opposite.

Near the end of the movie, we find her ex boyfriend wanting to come back to her. When he tells her he loves her, she tells him that was what she wanted to hear for long but then she declines getting back to him. She is no longer illusioned by his external charm. During the movie, when he tells her to betray her client's trust by exposing her secret this reveals his real character from inside and makes us know him and his reality more (though it the his reality was hinted upon at from the start of the movie for breaking up with her and not wanting to marry her just because she was blonde and not of his family's type).

Her dog plays a cute role in the movie, an entertaining one. When she goes to Harvard and dresses up formally for her first class with a tie and all, we find the dog wearing a tie too. At the final scene, when she is graduating we also find the dog with the graduation hat on his head. A nice entertaining addition to the elements of the movie.

Yet the movie, perhaps unintentionally, seems to discriminate against men. Her ex boyfriend turns to be a foolish guy, her male professor whom took her to work on his cases tries to seduce her and the guy who worked for her client lied in court. The three bad characters were males. While on the other side, the professor whom helped her was a female, the friend whom came closer to her was a female (her ex boyfriend's fiancee), the client who innocent of murder was a female. The woman whom she helped out get her dog back from her ex boyfriend and get a new boyfriend still another female.

The movie was a fun lesson in stereotyping trying to tell us that we should be empathic about people and try to understand them deep from within, to trust our instincts, that logic alone cannot work and that first impressions that are based on external features might not be the best way to judge others.

A Walk to Remember

Here is a bunch of emotions packed in a romance movie about faith in love. The movie is about love and how it can transform a person. The transformation of the hero came as a result of the heroine believing in him. She has faith in him. The movie is also about faith.

When at the final scene of the movie the hero describes his love to his wife as "cannot be seen but felt," the lines remind us of her description of her faith in God and in His presence.

The movie also talks about forgiveness. It talks about transformation to the good. The main transformation was in the hero who finally escaped from peer pressure and transformed to a different and better person. Yet other parallel transformations took place in the movie. The hero's old friends get to resolve their problems with him near the end of the movie. Both the boy whom he had fought with (and told him "we're through") and the girl that propagated bad fliers about the heroine. The hero himself goes to the boy whom he had tricked into jumping in shallow water at the beginning of the movie. Moreover, the hero and his father come to a resolution of their conflict. All this adding to the picture of a total transformation that took place in the hero.

The hero is going to medical school at the end of the movie. It was his 3ed and final wish in the list he had written earlier and which his mom thought was to far fetched and unrealistic. The heroine too fulfilled her wish by getting married in the church just like her parents.

The character of the heroines father represents the religious voice, which in the movie is not the higher voice, but is corrected and refines by another voice in several occasions. One of those occasions is when the heroine tels her father "I know God wants me to be happy," when her father warns her from the hero telling her that the hero has "expectations." Another instance of that higher voice is when the hero asks the heroine's father to take her out on Saturday, and the father refuses. The scene takes place inside the church to emphasize that this is the voice of religion. The hero talls the heroine's father that he asks him for what he himself preaches for, which is "faith." This returns us once again about the main idea around which the movie revolves, which is faith in what we cannot see but can feel.

The acting in the movie is extraordinary. The scene where the hero is on stage with the heroine and forgets the lines that he should say is one of those exceptional moments where the acting reaches an excellent state. We see the waiting in the eyes of the viewers: the heroine's father, the girl that loved the hero and others all act very well in this moment giving the exact sensation of people waiting for someone they know trying to memorize words on stage. Perhaps they did this scene very well because they are actors themselves and know how it feels having all been through it before. There are many other excellent acting moments in the movie too. For instance, the one when the heroine comes to the hero while being with his friends and tells him "See you after school," and he replies to her "In your dreams." This moment the hero acts exceptionally well trying to show that he felt a bit sorry inside him to do so, but just could not do other than that because of the strong peer pressure he was falling under.

The song that the heroine sings while she is on stage is an excellent one. The voice is amazing, the music is very good and for sure the words are very expressive of what comes next in the movie.

All in all, the movie is a brilliant one in all aspects: acting, theme, idea and directing.