The tag line for this film is “Meg finds out if blondes really do have more fun.” Well Meg may have found out but we the viewers are left in the cold because for some reason the whole issue of her hair color occupies all of the first five minutes of “Totally Blonde”. From then on we get treated to a standard love type movie and the matter of being blonde is only faintly attended to on occasion. However poor relationship decisions and acting like a selfish queen are followed with extreme detail.
The star of this exploration of the flaxen set is Krista Allen, one time star of the adult “Emmanuelle” series and former squeeze-toy of George Clooney. She plays Meg, a woman dismayed by the lack of quality men in her life. We meet our henna-haired heroine as a bubbly brunette, waiting in a restaurant for her boyfriend to join her. He arrives in a limo with two nubile pieces of arm candy in tow and bounces into the restaurant. As giddy as Meg is at the sight of him he breezily informs her that he has been having an affair with her best friend.
Meg takes the news hard and decides on a radical change in her life. Rather than making better choices in men she thinks her relationship status will improve by diving into a bottle of Clairol and becoming a fair-haired fox. This is really only a lateral move as Meg was something of a ditz to begin with; look no further than her belief that she can salve her woes and find a serious relationship by turning into a fun-loving and vapid blonde. That night she goes to a swing club to meet Liv, her best friend, (her other best friend I presume) and explain her change of life.
While at the lounge she catches the eye of the club’s crooner, Van, played rather well by Michael Buble’ who also sings on most of the many lounge songs we are treated to. Buble’ was also in the musical calamity “Duets”, but he is a welcome presence as the swinging soundtrack was the high point of the film. The next day writer/director Andrew Van Slee decides to have Van inexplicably send over his middle-aged limo driver to Meg’s work as a strip-o-gram. This is a scene that challenges all sense of logic.
For starters we have to believe the mentally light Meg is an advertising executive. Next, the sight of a pudgy and balding man dressed as Dudley Do Right who strips in the lobby did not induce phone calls to the authorities. Then the whole reason for the floor show was so that Van could explain over the phone that the performance was called “The Full Mounty”, (how I wish this were not true.) Somehow this surreal little vignette manages to sway Meg to go out with Van, a man who often utters the line, “I-A-G Baby!”, a catch phrase that nobody catches.
Van and Meg hit it off in a series of spirited dates but she then uncorks the unholiest of unholies and tells Van that he is a great friend. You see, Meg has her sights set on meeting a “Great Guy”, and a talented and successful club owner who dotes on her is not what she has in mind. To Van’s credit he doesn’t descend into a nightly ritual of mewling about his torment to his buddies over a platter of chicken wings and pitchers of Rolling Rock at the area sports bars.
During a lunch non-date with Van Meg meets Brad, a former high school crush who is, like–sooooo buff, and–I mean–a complete hottie! Brad is completely smitten with this new version of Meg, and in a surfer drawl thicker than melted board wax he totally asks her out. Brad turns out to be an entrepreneur, but since the marble head would probably think this was an insult I’ll just say he owns a body-board company. Meg feels she has landed her perfect man, which makes sense since together they manage to almost have enough smarts for one brain. Meanwhile Liv has begun to see what Meg failed to notice in Van, and they start off on a relationship of their own.
Now since Meg has found her perfect man and cast aside the vocalist, she naturally has problems with her best friend dating the man with whom she never was romantically involved and subsequently had cut off all communications entirely once he professed his affection. It does not help her stress that Brad begins to exhibit adolescent tendencies, all while speaking like a Tule elk in rut. Just as Meg begins to fall apart Van Slee unfurls a climatic final ten minutes that is most unlikely in order to tidy things up for a happy ending
One of the puzzling aspects of this movie is that the central theme attempts to dispel the notion that blondes are a stereotypical lot of addled hedonists. Then Van Slee commences to parade before the camera a troupe of broad portrayals—the snippy French Waiter, the hyper-sensitive gay man, the in-a-fog surfer dude. It takes a special talent to lecture and degrade at the same time.
The final frame finally reveals what Van was getting at with his slang, “I-A-G Baby”: It’s All Good. Ironic when you consider the film is mostly bad. Come for the blondes, stay for the music, and mix yourself a martini. By the end you’ll need one.
