EASY A (2010)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Taking Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" and updating it to the 2010 high school years is a smart move. But even in 2010, couldn't the filmmakers have opted for something else more humiliating than being marked with an A because you had sex? In high-school?
That is the issue I take with "Easy A"; it assumes that sex is still something to rave about in high-school. I know I am older and I was only a teenager in the 1980's, but sex was rarely an event that had to be broadcast around school. Since "American Pie" in 1999, teen comedies dealt with sex as the main plot twist when, in fact, I would have hoped teenagers have something else to talk about. And when you get an electrifyingly winsome actress like Emma Stone playing a teenager named Olive Penderghast, who is ignored by schoolmates and Google Earth (!) until it is leaked that she had sex with some guy (which she did not), it makes you wonder how far astray Hollywood is from reality.
Once Olive is heard in the bathroom by the religious-minded Marianne (Amanda Bynes) making a false confession to her best friend, Rhiannon (Aly Michalka), all hell breaks loose. Olive starts getting sex proposals from nerds and jocks and the like (including her harassed gay buddy), and gets money offers and/or $100 gift cards in exchange (like to Bed, Bath and Beyond and Home Depot). She doesn't have to have sex with these guys, just get paid for letting some loser broadcast it to everyone. That in itself is a great comic idea and it is milked for what it is worth. Things get shaky, however, when it involves her favorite teacher, Mr. Griffith (Thomas Haden Church) and his wife, a guidance counselor (Lisa Kudrow), and the morality of such an unethical practice gets more interesting but it is never truly dealt with.
The best scenes in "Easy A" are between Olive and her liberal, supportive parents (crisply acted by Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci), but most of "Easy A" avoids any issue that isn't sexual. In a film like Alexander Payne's "Election," the high-school teens in that film focused on politics, love, getting ahead, cheating, etc. Even the John Hughes films "Easy A" references had more complexity, not to mention a non-John Hughes film, Cameron Crowe's "Say Anything" which this film shamelessly steals its most iconic moments.
I'll put it simply: Emma Stone is a an adorable actress who I am sure will go on to great things. But a movie like "Easy A"only hints at her talent. The last thing she needs is to be stuck in Lindsay Lohan's "Mean Girls"-ish waters.
