I felt like I saw “Easy A” before I actually saw it because the previews explained the plot with such specificity: Nice girl Olive (Emma Stone) pretends to have sex with guys in order to improve their reputations around the halls of their high school.
That premise could’ve resulted in a shallow, one-joke movie, but fortunately “Easy A” explores high-school image issues with more depth than that, and it has an amazing cast. It starts with Stone (who broke through in “Superbad”) in her first lead role, and as I expected, she’s great. Although the movie could’ve used a tighter edit, Olive held my attention throughout, even when she unnecessarily addressed her vlog audience (the movie audience) before each act of the story, like Alexis Bledel did in last year’s “Post Grad.”
The cast is ridiculously, and multi-generationally, good. There’s Penn Badgley, regaining his likability from first-season “Gossip Girl,” as a cute love interest for Olive; Amanda Bynes as Mandy Moore’s character from “Saved!”; Thomas Haden Church as Olive’s favorite teacher; Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci having a “Murder One” reunion as Olive’s parents; Lisa Kudrow, Malcolm McDowell and Fred Armisen as various authority figures; and up-and-coming star Aly Michalka from “Hellcats” as Olive’s shallow best friend, Rhiannon.
“Easy A” is a slightly stylized take on reality, but it has a sufficient hold on the real world. For example, Olive’s folks are not your typical movie mom and dad who cause another set of problems for their offspring; rather, they are that sweet and bluntly sarcastic type that probably represents one of your friend’s parents — when you first meet them, it takes a while to catch up with their sardonic groove. Another example: Olive and Rhiannon seem too different to be besties, but you know what, that happens in real life, too.
Sure, some of the other characters are movie stereotypes, but somehow that didn’t bother me, like in John Hughes movies where everyone fits a simplified label, and yet it seems profound, especially if there’s a good music playing behind it (I discovered Remi Nicole via the “Easy A” soundtrack, and I thank the moviemakers for that). “Easy A” openly, blatantly acknowledges the Hughes parallels, but fortunately its not a full-blown homage; for example, there’s no evil teacher to watch out for.
At any rate, Olive certainly isn’t a cliché, sort of like the actress who plays her — cute and spunky, but not in a cookie-cutter way. Olive comes from a loving, but quirky, family, so when she encounters conflict at school (she gets labeled what was called a harlot in “The Scarlet Letter” era), it doesn’t cause her to spin out of control. Rather, she gets creative with it, stitching a red “A” into all of her tops and collecting gift cards from male students for whom she performs the service of pretending to have various degrees of relations with them.
“Easy A” explores how a teen’s image is everything in the high school setting, kind of like the 2000 movie “Gossip” and the current TV series “Gossip Girl,” only it’s not as melodramatic or soapy. It’s certainly not an “American Pie”-style comedy, either, but it often put a smile on my face with its societal observations (for example, the Christian students somehow have enough pull to change the school mascot from Blue Devils to Woodchucks).
It’s a great idea to have Olive fight the inertia of labeling in the high school setting by using it to her advantage. I suspect anyone who is or has ever been in high school will root for her. “Easy A” gets a solid B from me.
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