The plot of this bit of fluff runs like this: There's this West-coast, fluffy-slippered, sororrity girl who is about to graduate from somewhere like UCLA with subjects ranging from interior design to fingernail painting. On top of having apalling giggly friends, she seems about to receive a proposal from her wealthy, old-money boyfriend. Instead he tells her he's going off to Yale Law School, and she would not be suitable. Her response in the first instance is to try for Yale on the theory she will win him back on site, as it were. She has a 4.0 GPA, pays "a Spielberg" to direct her application essay in video form, and swats strenuously to get a 179 in her LSAT, so gets into Yale. Once there, her pink coiffure, black Porsche, social major goes down like a lead balloon, and she is snubbed, kicked out of class, and so on. She finally fights back, and although she remains conspicuously coiffured and pink-Mac-equipped, manages to expose the sleazy, win over the snooty, win a major court case in her Summer Internship, and date the sexiest, nicest guy on the plot.
I bother to review this 4-out-of-10, mediocre piece of fluff because it sports a response I have always respected, and of which I have oft debated the worth: When given a good, all-round kicking, she responds by working ever-harder and ever-cleverer, instead of feeling miserable and giving up. AJC and I have remarked that it is losers who retreat from a sting, winners who redouble their efforts. Kay believes most people do not respond in this way to criticism, so one should not expect it. She is right of course, and it is better, especially with kids, to encourage and euphemise away bad performance. However, it is nice to see a case of redoubled effort held up as an icon in a film (as in "Private Benjamin").