It was recently reported that the third installment of the Legally Blonde franchise was delayed. While fans were anticipating this movie to be released in early 2021, it has now been pushed back to the summer of 2022, making itself another victim in the heavy stream of Coronavirus-related delays. However, don’t fret, there are many movies that feature strong female leads, much like the beloved Elle Woods, in their quests to find meaning beyond true love.
The magic of Legally Blonde revolves around the movie’s main character Elle Woods. She is much more than what meets the eye. She is a strong believer in woman unity, meeting her nemesis with kindness, and attempting to befriend all of her peers. After following her recently-made ex-boyfriend to Harvard Law School, Elle Woods, along with her bachelor’s degree in fashion merchandising, becomes misplaced among the throngs of her intense and dull classmates. Legally Blonde follows her overcoming these barriers and learning to thrive, even without the motivation of her love interest.
While waiting for the franchise’s three-qual, which will now drop 21 years after the first installment, here are some women-led romcoms with the same Elle energy.
Starring Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner, 13 Going on 30 is a wild exploration of girlhood and staying true to one’s self. At 13 years old, the main character Jenna Rink craves popularity. At her birthday party, she finds herself being the sufferer of a silly prank played by a clique of mean girls. In desperation, she wishes to grow up — to be “thirty and flirty, and thriving”— and finds herself waking up as her an adult. However, this Jenna is the opposite of her adolescent self: her friends have changed, she has wrecked relationships, and her companions secretly hate her.
Similar to Elle Woods, Jenna Rink has to navigate an unfamiliar world in her attempt to achieve great things. To do so, she relies on her true instincts and learns to trust herself, rather than follow the path that’s laid out for her.
This movie follows Sandra Bullock as Grace Hart, a super-cool, untouchable FBI Agent who is assigned to go undercover at a beauty pageant. As a woman who is quite the opposite of Elle Woods, she struggles to hold the expected charisma and “class” of the surrounding beauty queens.
Despite her initial toughness and unwillingness to cooperate, Grace Hart finds herself invested in the case. She discovers that she misjudged the contestants based on their good looks, and comes to appreciate them as individuals. Grace gets a glow-up, going from frumpy to stunning, and of course it’s only then that men start to notice her, but forging bonds with women not like her helps Grace embrace her softer side. Also, Michael Caine is amazing as her world-weary pageant coach.
More of a typical comedy than a romantic-comedy, House Bunny stars Anna Faris as Shelly Darlingson, a former Playboy Bunny who finds herself homeless and unemployed after her 27th birthday. She ends up stumbling upon the members of an unpopular college sorority and after convincing them to trust her as their “house mother” she begins to give the students lessons on how to be popular (accompanied by a fun makeover montage, of course).
The House Bunny tells an excellent tale in Shelly Darlingson’s character development, as well as the sorority members, played by Emma Stone, Kat Dennings, and Katharine McPhee. These women find themselves getting swept up in the desire to be well-liked and conventionally beautiful. They have to relearn how to be themselves, without entirely villainizing their new qualities— they figure out the best way to be “Half-themselves, Half-Shelly.” While being a knee-slapper comedy, the movie still has an underlying female empowerment theme similar to the one in Legally Blonde.
The Wedding Planner casts Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey as leads. Lopez plays Mary Fiore, an acclaimed wedding planner who finds herself working for a couple that is quickly revealed to be half-comprised by her most recent romantic interest (McConaughey). Things become muddled as she has to choose between letting this conflict get in the way of her developing career.
In the film, Mary Fiore is constantly bombarded with questions about her love life, which she places to the side in order to focus on other priorities. She is a quick-thinking, witty worker who takes pride in the success of her hard work, traits that are shared with the aforementioned Elle Woods.
Uptown Girls is a fun comedy-drama that refuses to be reduced by its romantic interest. It focuses on Brittany Murphy’s character, Molly Gunn, and her budding relationship with the child she nannies, Lorraine (played by a young Dakota Fanning). Although once carefree and at the top-of-the-world, Molly Gunn finds herself a victim of embezzlement, and she has to figure out how to adjust to a more normal lifestyle. She finds herself falling in-and-out of love with an upcoming rockstar and seeing through the pretentiousness of the family she succumbs to working for.
At the heart of this movie is growing up, both in the sense that Molly Gunn is facing these unspeakable troubles while she is orphaned and only in her early twenties, and Lorraine is a child with many questionable boundaries that she is slowly taught to overcome. Like in Legally Blonde, there is a prevalent romantic storyline but it takes a backseat to the female leads and their journey towards stability.
Starring The Daily Show’s Jessica Williams, Master of None’s Noël Wells, and the comedian Chris O’Dowd, The Incredible Jessica James tells the story of the titular character and her journey to find new love. The movie starts out with Jessica James fresh out of a relationship, finding herself on a blind date with a man in a similar predicament. While their love adventure persists, she is passionately working at a children’s theater.
The movie is hilarious and generally well-received, Jessica James has charming wit and a huge heart for her work. She has a strong relationship with her female friends and is unabashedly a feminist, even bringing a handmade book titled “the ABC’s of Subverting the Patriarchal Paradigm” to her friend’s baby shower. It would be a dream to see a crossover with Elle Woods and Jessica James getting brunch together, talking about the ways in which they have challenged gender norms.
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