Critic Reviews

Ultimately, those who can get past the pilot and the canon problems will be rewarded with a lighthearted, bingeable series. When I got to the season finale, I whispered an Elle Woods-esque "yes!" that Elle has already been renewed for season 2.

This is a show that’s quite comfortable working from its inspiration, and much less so when it’s attempting to forge its own path. That last part isn’t quite in the Elle Woods spirit, but “Elle” gets close enough.

The younger cast is likable across the board. Written by Laura Kittrell, “Elle” is lightweight, often obvious and oddly, refreshingly innocent.

Cute but instantly forgettable, “Elle” isn’t awful, but it plays like unnecessary fan fiction.

It feels stuck somewhere between the show it thought it wanted to be and the show it has the potential to become.

I’ll be honest, the series (which tilts towards a second one at the end) is all a bit young for a fogey like me, but it is a nice, slick nostalgia fix — a throwback to simpler, happier times — and as a prequel, it definitely works.

Elle has enough charm to get by. In a world that needs all the harmless escapism it can get, Elle gets the job done. But it could, given its pedigree and its writing at the peaks, have been so much more.

The key to the original film's greatness was watching Elle outsmart her snooty classmates, but we don't get anything that unexpected or satisfying in "Elle." There's a certain spunk missing here as well.

The series avoids taking any real chances that might rock the boat.

Unless we eventually learn that Elle suffered a memory wipe after returning to LA for college, the series—already renewed for season two—offers little more than surface-level escapism aimed at millennials who are nostalgic for the ’90s.