In the LotR books, Gimli is very much Legolas's equal in terms of battle prowess and intellect. So it feels disrespectful in the movie when he get completely toasted during his comic-relief drinking contest with Legolas. But weirdly, if we look at the source material, there's some textual evidence to back this up.
First of all....wood-elves can absolutely get drunk. It happens in the Hobbit (book) when Bilbo helps the dwarves escape (from LEGOLAS'S HOUSE) after their elven guards get so wasted that they all pass out. So the LotR movie's implication that elves are physically incapable of getting drunk, or that Legolas would be unfamiliar with the concept of alcohol intoxication is not supported by the text.
HOWEVER, if we refer back to the aforementioned passage in the Hobbit, the wine that the elf guards get drunk from is specifically described as a "heady" wine, meant only for "the king's feasts." As the king's son, Legolas probably goes to all the feasts, so it's reasonable to assume he's drinking some pretty potent stuff on the regular.
Tolkien doesn't give us Legolas's exact age, but there's evidence in the text that he's at least 500 years old, meaning that at minimum, he's been partying for centuries. So even if Gimli is the most hard-core party dwarf in history, he's going against Legolas, a guy who's been drinking a constant supply of superwine for 3x longer than Gimli's been alive.
For these reasons, I begrudgingly admit: Gimli would have no shot at winning a drinking contest against Legolas, but his dwarvish pride would result in him downing pints until he was a piss drunk buffoon. Additionally, the centuries of alcohol tolerance that Legolas has acquired means he could probably drink an almost unlimited amount of regular beer with very little impact.
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