10 Movies Like Legally Blonde You Need To Check Out

Whenever you’re feeling down and out, you should probably watch (or re-watch) “Legally Blonde” — and by the time the credits roll, you’ll feel like you can do and be anything you want. Written by screenwriting duo Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith (making their first but not last appearance on this particular list) and directed by Robert Luketic, “Legally Blonde” tells the self-affirming story of Elle Woods (a pitch-perfect Reese Witherspoon), a bubbly young woman living a seemingly perfect life as president of her California sorority Delta Nu. One night, Elle heads to dinner with her seemingly perfect boyfriend Warner Huntington III (future “Vampire Diaries” star Matthew Davis), expecting him to propose; instead, Warner breaks up with Elle as he prepares to head to Harvard Law School, telling her he needs somebody more “serious.” (He specifically tells her he needs a “Jackie, not a Marilyn” if he’s going to be a senator by age 30, in fact.)

So what does Elle do? She aces the LSAT, hires a Coppola to direct her admissions video, and gets herself into Harvard Law School to win Warner’s heart once and for all. When she gets to Harvard, though, her real journey of self-discovery begins thanks to new friends like Emmett Richmond (Luke Wilson) and even Warner’s fiancée Vivian Kensington (Selma Blair), who starts out as Elle’s sworn enemy and becomes her best friend. By the end the film, Elle doesn’t need Warner; she has herself and her own brilliance to fall back on. 

With all that said, what should you watch after “Legally Blonde?” We’ve got you covered. Here are 10 movies that pair perfectly with “Legally Blonde.”

With the utmost due respect to “Legally Blonde,” Amy Heckerling’s “Clueless” walked so that movie could run (in heels). Led by Alicia Silverstone’s winning performance as pampered Beverly Hills teenager Cher Horowitz, “Clueless” is a snapshot into Cher’s unbelievably privileged life with her litigator dad Mel Horowitz (Dan Hedaya), her best friend Dionne Davenport (Stacey Dash), and her beautiful, also-wealthy friends. Much like Elle, Cher experiences a major sea change in her life when she takes a new transfer student named Tai Frasier (the late Brittany Murphy, also making her first but not last appearance on this list), who helps her see things differently … as does Cher’s former stepbrother, the rakishly handsome Josh Lucas (an ageless Paul Rudd).

Like Elle after her, Cher desperately needs to look inward and make some necessary changes — and while neither bubbly blonde woman needs to completely transform, both Cher and Elle benefit from some introspection. By the end of “Clueless,” Cher has finally come to terms with her love for Josh, abandoned so many of the rules and guidelines she blindly followed for years, and is happy with who she is … and along the way, she takes her driving test, which is one of the funniest things ever committed to film. (After sideswiping a car and taking its side mirror clean off, Cher asks the baffled instructor if she should leave a note. It’s incredible.)

Looking for another movie that features a fish out of water dealing with the complicated legal system? You’ll want to add 1992’s “My Cousin Vinny” to your watchlist right away. Directed by Jonathan Lynn and penned by Dale Launer, the movie doesn’t start with Joe Pesci’s titular “cousin” Vincent LaGuardia Gambini — but his younger cousin Bill Gambini (“The Karate Kid” veteran Ralph Macchio) and Bill’s best friend Stan Rothenstein (Mitchell Whitfield). While driving cross-country, Bill and Stan accidentally shoplift a can of tuna from a small Georgia store, and right after they leave, two men in an identical-looking vintage car pull up, rob the store, and shoot the clerk. Bill and Stan are the suspects, though, and when they’re arrested for murder, Bill calls his cousin Vinny, a brand-new lawyer who, as it turns out, required six tries to pass the New York bar exam.

Despite a very slow start — thanks in large part to Judge Chamberlain Haller (Fred Gwynne), an old-fashioned Southern man who takes an instant disliking to the brash Vinny — Vinny, like Elle Woods, eventually proves that he’s an incredibly shrewd lawyer. Not just that, but he has help in the form of his formidable fiancée Mona Lisa Vito, an “out-of-work hairdresser” and secret car expert played by Marisa Tomei, who’s so outstanding in this film that she picked up an Oscar (unfortunately a rare occurrence for a great comedic performance, but she definitely deserved it). “My Cousin Vinny” pairs perfectly with “Legally Blonde,” even though Vinny and Elle are … pretty different at first glance.

Another great film from screenwriters Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith, director Fred Wolf’s film “The House Bunny” isn’t just a criminally underrated movie, but a phenomenal spirital successor to something like “Legally Blonde.” When Shelley Darlingson, played by the astoundingly funny Anna Faris, wakes up on her 27th birthday to find that she’s apparently been ejected from the Playboy Mansion — crushing her dreams of becoming a Playmate to the then-alive Hugh Hefner — she goes in search of a new community and finds a sorority house filled with, for lack of a better word here, a bunch of losers. Technically, Zeta Alpha Zeta, a less-favored sorority, is the second sorority house Shelley visits, but the beautiful and popular girls at Phi Iota Mu reject her on sight … and thankfully, Shelley is welcomed by the girls at Zeta Alpha Zeta, who are in danger of losing their entire organization unless they can recruit 30 more pledges as soon as possible.

Aided by Shelley, her giant makeup bag, and her unshakable confidence, the girls at Zeta Alpha Zeta — including Natalie Sandler (Emma Stone), Mona Rita (Kat Dennings), and Joanne Davis (Rumer Willis), all of whom lack self confidence before they meet Shelley — get glam, but also start to come to terms with who they truly are. Not only does Zeta Alpha Zeta thrive with Shelley as its “house mother,” but as they face off against the antagonistic Phi Iota Mu, Shelley and her girls come out on top, just like Elle does in “Legally Blonde.” People sleep on “The House Bunny,” but truthfully, it’s just as funny and surprisingly poignant as “Legally Blonde.”

As of this writing, Emma Stone has two Academy Awards, but real ones know that this talented performer has been an outstanding lead actress since 2010’s “Easy A.” Directed by romantic comedy veteran Will Gluck and written by playwright Bert V. Royal, “Easy A” is such a self-aware take on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic American novel “The Scarlet Letter” that it constantly and directly references reading the book as a part of a high school curriculum (and even mentions the dreadful Demi Moore film adaptation where she takes a lot of baths). Stone plays Olive Penderghast, an amusingly named, wry, and mostly unpopular high schooler in Ojai, California who needs a quick excuse to get out of a camping trip with her best friend Rhiannon Abernathy (Aly Michalka) and her weird family. The excuse Olive comes up with on the fly is that she has a hot date, and when Rhiannon gets back from her trip, Olive takes things way too far and announces that actually, she lost her virginity to this imaginary guy.

News of Olive’s “promiscuity” spreads through her school like wildfire, and before long, she’s faking sexual encounters with students trying to prove themselves, whether they’re queer and closeted and trying to best their bullies or just in need of a social boost. It’s not a surprise that this situation spirals out of control — and somehow leads to Olive sewing a bunch of scarlet As into corsets and wearing them to school with no pushback from administrators — but Stone is firmly in control of this film from beginning to end, and the writing was on the wall years ago that she was a massive star. Olive is so self-assured, confident, and clever that frankly, even Elle Woods could take some notes from her.

Can we call “The Devil Wears Prada” a reverse “Legally Blonde,” in that the main character starts off dowdy and becomes glamorous but loses a piece of herself in the process? David Frankel’s 2006 adaptation of Lauren Weisberger’s book of the same name — which was adapted for the big screen by writer Aline Brosh McKenna — introduces us to Andrea “Andy” Sachs (Anne Hathaway), an aspiring journalist with lofty goals who ends up interviewing for a position she doesn’t particularly want at Runway Magazine. Andy doesn’t exactly impress the magazine’s esteemed editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), her future fellow assistant Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt in her genuinely astonishing film debut), or Runway’s art director Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci), but Miranda hires her anyway, and Andy’s demanding, overwhelming, and exhausting life at Runway officially begins.

Despite pushback from her boyfriend Nate Cooper (Adrian Grenier) over her sudden sartorial and personal changes, Andy gives into Miranda’s insane standards and starts to thrive at Runway even as the rest of her life basically falls apart. In “Legally Blonde,” Elle just needs to access something that was inside of her all along, meaning her own brilliance; in “The Devil Wears Prada,” Andy needs to weigh whether or not she’s okay with who she’s become thanks to her all-consuming job. Still, put together a makeshift movie marathon with both of those choices and you won’t be disappointed.

Like “The Devil Wears Prada,” you could conceivably call Donald Petrie’s 2000 movie “Miss Congeniality” a sort of reverse “Legally Blonde,” except for one important thing: the female protagonist doesn’t lose herself as she becomes more glamorous, but actually manages to open up a previously closed-off part of her heart. After FBI special agent Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock) gets demoted to desk duty after an incident during a sting operation, her partner Eric Matthews (Benjamin Bratt) suddenly becomes her boss — and he ends up overseeing a case concerning a potential bomb plot at a beauty pageant. You can probably see where this is going; before long, Gracie gets an alias (Gracie Lou Freebush), is entering the fictional Miss United States pageant as Miss New Jersey, and needs to get all glammed up with the help of pageant coach Victor Melling (Michael Caine).

What Gracie doesn’t expect to do during her time undercover as Miss New Jersey, though, is make friends … much like Elle Woods does at Harvard Law School. (This does stand, however, in direct contrast to “The Devil Wears Prada,” where Andy doesn’t really make worthwhile friends during her time at Runway.) Even though Gracie still thinks the world of pageants is pretty vapid, the girls she meets and ultimately saves at Miss United States, especially the eventual winner Miss Rhode Island Cheryl Frasier (Heather Burns), become her lifelong friends … proving that you can find common ground with nearly anyone if you just give it an honest try.

Directed by auteur Steven Soderbergh, written by Susannah Grant, and based on a true and gripping story, “Erin Brockovich” is a lot more than just the movie that won the star, Julia Roberts, an Oscar; it’s a searing portrait of one woman’s battle with and victory against a broken legal system. After basically talking her way into a job at a lawyer’s office after said lawyer, Ed Masry (Albert Brooks) — who represented Erin after trial involving a car crash that wasn’t her fault — Erin comes into possession of files regarding an intended real estate purchase that gives her pause. Specifically, the California company Pacific Gas and Electric Company wants to buy the home of a woman named Donna Jensen (Marg Helgenberger), and as it turns out, Donna’s house sits on a large deposit of chromium, which has been making her sick for years through the water in her small town of Hinkley. In return for her silence, PG&E has been providing her with private medical care, but the damage is done.

Eventually, Erin uncovers a lot of medical damage in Hinkley due to the chromium in the water and proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the company knew the physical damage they were causing and ignored it. Like “Legally Blonde,” “Erin Brockovich” is a story of a woman who takes on the legal system and comes out on top, but be warned: the subject matter is much more serious.

Alexander Payne’s 1999 movie “Election” sort of answers a question that admittedly very few people are asking: what if Elle Woods was a teenager and also insane?! Based on Tom Perrotta’s novel of the same name and adapted by Payne and his co-screenwriter Jim Taylor, the film stars Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick, a character who is, without question, one of the best archetypes of an overachieving high school student ever written. Initially, Tracy is running unopposed to be the student body president of George Washington Carver High in sleepy Ohama, Nebraska, but one day, teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) decides that she doesn’t deserve to have the student body presidency simply handed to her. (Why Jim does develop a one-sided beef with a literal teenager? It has to do with an affair she had with one of his colleagues that resulted in the colleague being fired, even though, frankly, none of that was Tracy’s fault.)

To challenge Tracy, Jim convinces the dopey but sweet popular jock Paul Metzler (Chris Klein), who can’t play any sports due to a skiing injury anyway, to run against her; before long, Paul’s rebellious sister Tammy (Jessica Campbell) joins the race too. (Tammy almost exclusively does this because she’s in love with Paul’s girlfriend, but she’s a great spoiler in the race anyway.) As Jim’s obsession with Tracy spirals further and further out of control, Witherspoon infuses Tracy herself with a deranged steeliness that’s truly unforgettable, and even though Elle Woods is much happier and bubblier, there’s still some Tracy DNA in Witherspoon’s fictional lawyer.

Even though Elle Woods’ awful boyfriend is totally out of line when he tells her she needs to get “serious” in “Legally Blonde,” some movie protagonists do need to introduce a little bit of seriousness into their fictional lives, and Brittany Murphy’s Molly Gunn in “Uptown Girls” is a prime example. Naive and living off her rock star dad’s money, Molly is aimless and without any real direction in life, and after she falls in love with a musician named Neal Fox (Jesse Spencer) who leaves her and breaks her heart, Molly realizes that she’s out of money thanks to her father’s thieving manager. In desperate need of a job, Molly starts working as a nanny for Lorraine “Ray” Schleine (Dakota Fanning), an unusually uptight 8-year-old dealing with multiple issues, including hypochondria and obsessive behavior, thanks in large part to her dysfunctional family life.

Because Ray’s mother Roma (Heather Locklear) is never around and her father is in a coma, Molly becomes the young girl’s only real friend and confidante, and despite their various differences, the two end up bonding in an entirely unexpected way. Plus, in a sweet role reversal, it’s Ray who helps Molly grow up and come into her own, while Molly successfully helps Ray loosen up and find joy in the little things. By the time “Uptown Girls” comes to a close, both Molly and Ray have grown up in vastly different ways, but like Elle’s time at Harvard, the experience changed them for the better.

When Elle Woods gets to Harvard Law School, she shakes things up for her fellow students and the school’s faculty alike … and the same general thing happens in the Amazon original movie “Late Night” from 2019. Directed by Nisha Ganatra and written by Mindy Kaling, “Late Night” stars Kaling as Molly Patel, who has no experience as a comedy writer but decides to apply for a late-night writing position with legendary host Katherine Newbury’s (Emma Thompson) show anyway. Molly is ultimately hired to promote diversity behind the scenes of the show but surprises everyone when she doesn’t take this lying down, and despite Katherine’s initial distaste for her, Molly ends up helping to make the show much better with her pitches, jokes, and ideas.

When Katharine experiences a personal scandal, Molly does what Elle would do and sticks by her new friend and mentor’s side, working with her to help her come to terms with her bad behavior and become a better person in the process. Kaling is a huge fan of romantic comedies and was, at one point, supposedly writing “Legally Blonde 3” — so it’s no surprise that her film “Late Night” feels like it owes a lot of good things to the original “Legally Blonde.”