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Easy A
After a little white lie about losing her virginity gets out, a clean cut high school girl sees her life paralleling Hester Prynne's in "The Scarlet Letter," which she is currently studying in school -- until she decides to use the rumor mill to advance her social and financial standing.
Genres: Comedy
Running Time: 1 hr. 32 min.
Release Date: September 17th, 2010 (wide)
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic elements involving teen sexuality, language and some drug material.
Distributor: Sony Pictures Releasing
| Starring: |
Emma Stone, Penn Badgley, Amanda Bynes, Dan Byrd, Thomas Haden Church |
| Directed by: |
Will Gluck |
| Produced by: |
Zanne Devine, Will Gluck, Mark Benton Johnson | |
 Whatever else it accomplishes, the sassy high school comedy “Easy A” commands attention for the irresistible presence of Emma Stone, playing a good girl who pretends to be bad. Her performance is the best of its type since Alicia Silverstone’s star turn several high school generations ago in Amy Heckerling’s 1995 hit, “Clueless.” You can only hope that Ms. Stone has better luck with her follow-up films than Ms. Silverstone, who has never again quite hit the bull’s-eye.
Ms. Stone’s character, Olive Penderghast, is an indefatigably self-assured, clever, attractive California girl at Ojai High School who narrates her story to a Webcam. A satire directed by Will Gluck from a screenplay by Bert V. Royal, “Easy A” is so lighthearted that even its designated villains (a circle of pious Jesus freaks who have vowed celibacy and picket for Olive’s expulsion) exhibit the daffy comic exuberance of the teenagers in “Glee.” Nothing can keep them down for long, and nothing is really serious.
 Easy A” isn’t nearly as good a movie as “Clueless,” Ms. Heckerling’s contemporary pastiche of the Jane Austen novel “Emma.” But the one-liner-loaded screenplay has the same insouciant charm. “Easy A” is also tied (much more loosely than “Clueless”) to a literary classic. Olive, who becomes a social pariah by refusing to deny rumors that she is promiscuous and prostituting herself, is studying “The Scarlet Letter” in her English class. At the height of her notoriety she sews a capital A (A for what? — it’s not clear) on her clothes and parades around the school in skimpy, suggestive outfits. As the Christians, led by Marianne Bryant (Amanda Bynes), denounce Olive as a slut, she is besieged with attention by boys who believe the rumors.
The trouble begins after Olive’s toxic best friend, Rhiannon (Aly Michalka), questions her about the previous weekend, which she spent alone. Fed up with Rhiannon’s prurient nosiness, Olive says she slept with a college boy. That tidbit becomes viral gossip, lavishly embellished, after Marianne overhears it in the bathroom. Suddenly the whole school is giving the previously invisible Olive hard, inquiring looks. Instead of cringing in shame at her suddenly bad reputation, she defiantly decides to use it for good.
In the movie’s funniest scene, she feigns wild, noisy sex with Brandon (Dan Byrd), a persecuted gay student, at a party at which the guests crowd around the door to listen to their faked S-and-M high jinks. Among the school’s mostly virginal boys, Brandon emerges as a heroic stud. Seeking similar redemption, assorted nerds accost Olive and beg her to give them manly credibility by hearsay. She agrees to help them for a price, without actually sleeping with them.
 I’m not sure contemporary high school students, who are more sexually experienced than the film’s teenagers, will buy “Easy A,” although its tech-savvy vision of teenage life in the age of texting and Twitter posts is up to the minute. Mean-girl cults and bullies are a lot more menacing in the real world than as portrayed in “Easy A,” in which actual cruelty is mostly a game in which no one gets seriously hurt. Plus, “Easy A” has a perfect prince in waiting for Olive in Woodchuck Todd (Penn Badgley), who was her crush in eighth grade. (Ms. Stone and Mr. Badgley, incidentally, are in their early 20s and look it.)
The subplots in “Easy A” throw in some awkward curves. Olive’s parents, Dill (Stanley Tucci) and Rosemary (Patricia Clarkson), are laissez-faire hippies who completely trust their daughter and sail through the movie as if they were savoring an amusing private joke.
 The one discordant note that can’t be laughed off is the soured marriage of Olive’s English teacher (Thomas Haden Church) and the school guidance counselor (Lisa Kudrow), who gives a venereal disease to a handsome Christian student (Cam Gigandet). Never mind that the student, who is so dumb that he hasn’t graduated in four years, has reached the age of consent. The joke is a cheap shot tossed into a movie that, for all its hip posturing, is fundamentally and safely puritanical. “Easy A” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has strong language and a prurient attitude.
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