Easy A

I remember first hearing about this movie thinking "A modern day, teenage version of The Scarlett Letter sounds painful!" When I read what the movie was actually going to be, I was a bit more interested and when they cast the lovely, charming and hilarious Emma Stone as the lead, I was very much more excited. Ever since Superbad, I have felt Emma Stone was a star in waiting. She outshone Anna Farris in House bunny and I have just been anticipating the moment she got the chance to break out. She is sexy, but in a way that hits you differently. She comes off as approachable, and whip smart, but sexy. She is a very version of Ellen Page and it is kind of fitting that this is her break out role, because in a lot of ways, Easy A comes off as a sexier version of Juno. And your enjoyment of this movie might depend on if you want a sexier, little more mainstream version of Juno.

Olive(Stone) is a girl telling us a story through a webcam. She lets the audience know "There are two sides to every story and this is mine, the right one." Olive was once par tof the faceless masses at her high school. She spent her weekends in her room lip-syncing to "Pocketful of Sunshine" and she gets straight A's and never causes a stir. She has a sexy, slutty best friend, Rhiannon(Aly Michalka) who bugs Olive to tell her the story of the date Olive said she had. Olive made the whole thing up, but soon the rumor went around that Olive was kind of slutty. She lived up the notoriety. She kind of gets off on the infamy. However, things start to spiral for her when she fake has sex with a gay guy to help his reputation. Soon she has losers of all types paying her in gift cards to fake have sex with her. The Christian group on campus, led by Marianne starts to make her life hell and instead of fessing up to the stuff, Olive decides to wear it proudly. As she is studying The Scarlett Letter in English class, Olive decides to stitch a giant red A on her entire new slutty wardrobe.

I am not sure I can do the movie justice in terms of the story, but I think I did a pretty good job. What matters most is that Easy A is flat out hilarious! Emma Stone is absolutely wonderful in every aspect of the film. She is funny, vulnerable and makes it sort of believable that this ridiculous story could happen. She is the entire movie, so it really hinges on her performances. She reacts well to her fellow students and to the adults that pepper the movie as well. Thomas Hayden Church as her English teacher, Lisa Kudrow as the counselor, Malcolm McDowell as the principal and the absolutely delightful couple of Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive's parents all offer something to better the film. Amanda Bynes does great work as the Christian leader and Penn Badgley shows up as the potential love interest for Olive and is not at all afraid to get goofy.

Easy A offers a lot to things that came before it. yes, it clearly is influenced by The Scarlett Letter, but as a work of post-modern film, it also owes worlds to the movies of John Hughes and it acknowledges it by explicitly referencing them and showing clips from them. In fact, the film is, at times, a Ferris Bueller style fairy tale, and it nods to Ferris Bueller with a shower scene Mohawk and later it shows a clip from the movie. Olive, as a narrator is interesting because she admits from the beginning there are two sides to the story and to be honest, the story is outrageous and if you stop to think about where the story goes you might forget to just sit back and enjoy the show.

Tucci and Clarkson, as these hippie style parents get the most laughs, and are clearly inspired by Juno. The film is also hyper literate and very very smart. The dialogue is quick witted, Olive talks like an adult and the film is very knowing in how unlike real life it is, but it also lovingly mocks 1980s movies, while giving us the closest thing to a John Hughes movie as we can probably get these days. Everything in this film is coated with a great sense of humor and self awareness that even when it spins out of control, and it does spin out of control, you can forgive it because it is so genuinely hilarious. I love the reference to Mark Twain's Huck Finn and the callback to it towards the end of the film and I love how smart it is in general.

I laughed my way through the whole movie and for a comedy that is all you really need, but I also think Emma Stone is going to break out in this movie, the way Reese Witherspoon did in Legally Blonde, or Lindsay Lohan did in Mean Girls. Comparisons to Mean Girls abound in reviews all over the place, but I actually think movie is funnier and even zanier than Mean Girls. It gets just as unrealistic, and they are both offering a different kind of commentary on high school but this does it better. The English teacher has a few great rants, especially one on Facebook and how teenagers think everything they say is the most important and pressing issue in the world. Yes, Easy A is having its cake and eating it too, but when it is this much fun, I am perfectly okay with it.

Final Grade: A-