If you think of Elle Woods as a singular (albeit fictional) individual existing within a singular (albeit fictional) continuity, Amazon’s new Legally Blonde prequel defies all narrative logic.

The entire premise of the earlier film was that this California girl arrives at Harvard oblivious to life beyond boys, clothes and sorority sisterhood; Elle ’s reveal that she’d previously spent her teen years amid the grunge rockers and activists of Seattle is a character inconsistency so gaping it’d require a Days of Our Lives -level bout of amnesia to fill it.

Elle

The Bottom Line A for effort, B minus for execution.

Airdate: Wednesday, July 1 (Prime Video)

Cast: Lexi Minetree, June Diane Raphael, Tom Everett Scott, Jacob Moskovitz, Gabrielle Policano, Chandler Kinney, Zac Looker

Developed by: Laura Kittrell

But if, on the other hand, you think of Elle Woods as an endlessly rebootable franchise IP à la James Bond or Superman, and this latest adventure as a loose re-adaptation of Laura Brown’s source novel…