The last time an English class novel related this much to my life, I was in the first grade. We were reading Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Six was a rough age for me, and high school, at least the kind seen in teen comedy movies, seems to be no easier. While I found solace in the tale of young Alexander, Olive Penderghast, played by Emma Stone in a star-making performance, finds inspiration in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in the new comedy Easy A.
After refusing to repudiate rumors of her sexual promiscuity, she sews a capital “A” onto her clothing, an allusion to Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Olive, enjoying her newfound attention, fully embraces her alter ego. In perhaps the film’s most memorable scene, she struts into school wearing a revealing corset adorned with a red “A” as onlookers gasp and hiss snide remarks in her direction.
The story begins like most teen comedies. Olive is a normal, slightly insecure teenager girl who hides her sexual inexperience with snappy comebacks and witty one-liners. She lives below the high school radar, gets good grades and spends her weekends alone in her room belting to Natasha Bedingfield. The trouble starts when Olive tells a white lie to avoid camping with her best friend’s (Aly Michalka) parents.
Soon, the high school rumor mill goes into overdrive and the whole school believes that Olive, who is in fact a virgin, spent a passionate night with an older man. Finally getting attention from the opposite sex, she doesn’t deny these rumors, but instead perpetuates them. At the party of the year, Olive pretends to have sex with Brandon (Dan Byrd), a bullied gay friend, to stop the jocks from picking on him. Other misfits learn of Olive’s agreement and for a fee, she “fake blows their minds.” The lies soon spin out of control and Olive is unable to keep up with her own deception.
What sets Easy A apart from other mediocre teen flicks is Emma Stone. You loved her in Superbad and you will love her even more without Jonah Hill headbutting her. Stone comes into her own and delivers her lines with confidence and an appealing self-deprecation. Her performance makes the film completely enjoyable and you will catch yourself embarrassingly grinning at the screen (guilty) for the whole movie. She’s the girl you wished you knew in high school and gives ultimate teen queen Alicia Silverstone’s Cher a run for her money.
For some inexplicable reason, the film devotes a significant portion to meandering and confusing subplots. Although Olive’s parents, Dill (Stanley Tucci) and Rosemary (Patricia Clarkson) have some of the best off-the-cuff lines in the film, their unexplained complete trust in their daughter and laidback attitude is a little unnerving. If my parents caught wind of rumors that I was prostituting myself and sleeping with anything with a pulse (no comment), I would hope that they would do more than joke about how wild they were in high school and giggle like they just went into the backyard and took a hit of the good stuff.
Lisa Kudrow and Thomas Hayden Church, two teachers at Olive’s school who are married to each other, pop up periodically to fulfill the film’s adult quota and try to convince the audience that this is an actual school instead of a communal watering hole for models. Kudrow and Church do their best with the material given to them, but ultimately poor writing (Kudrow has a fling with a student) and weird pacing are out of tune with the rest of the film and play into the same teen movie conventions that the film tries to parody.
The film’s primary weakness is its believability. Although Emma Stone’s performance makes the movie, she, along with her costars, are neck and neck with the Harry Potter kids in the age inappropriateness Olympics. None of the main actors are in their teens and if I saw Penn Badgely walking around my school, I would address him as sir and ask which class he was substituting for. Maybe it’s because I’m no longer a high school student or that I have no serious visual impairments, but the cast seemed far too old to me.
Some of the movie’s language also rang false. Olive is sent to the principal’s office and berated for calling a snotty girl a twat. Two problems: Who says “twat” anymore? If someone called me a twat (probably with good reason), I would first ask them to brush off the dust from that thing called a computer and look up some new slang and then fire back with some language I learned on the streets aka THE WIRE.
My second problem is the casting of the principal. Though he was only on screen for a grand total of two minutes, the casting of Malcolm Mcdowell as the school’s principal completely took me out of the movie. I liked A Clockwork Orange too, but whoever lobbed his name out into the casting pool should be forced to watch that scene over and over and explain why a principal in Ojai, California has a thick British accent. The film was originally intended to be rated R and include much raunchier dialogue. Turning up the dial on the inappropriate meter would have not only made Easy A more realistic, but also a better movie.
Easy A had the potential to become a teen classic. Though the formula is simple, something goes awry in the movie’s third act. Everything gets wrapped up too quickly and with little resolution. Silly subplots and poor decisions interrupt the movie’s quick pace. That being said, there are some laugh-out-loud moments and the movie is worth seeing for Emma Stone’s performance alone.
P.S. I wanted to end this review with a grade wordplay like Easy B/B+ (Get it?), but I’ll save you from my bad punning. •
Three out of four Camels!
