Easy A

Easy A
September 17, 2010
Screen Gems etc.
Comedy, Romance
DVD
B

Like Going the Distance, this is better than it should be, although not as good as that, and no, it does not earn an A (easy or otherwise) from me.  I put it on a level with Juno, which it resembles in some ways, in that the main character is a witty, cynical, but good-hearted teenage girl with awesome parents who support her, even as her sexuality makes her an outcast at school.  In Juno's case, it's because she's pregnant, while here Olive (played by Emma Stone) is both victim and manipulator of rumors about her promiscuity.  The title and much of the plot are inspired by The Scarlet Letter, but this is not based on a book per se.  The movie is at least as much about the effect of social media, from texting to videoblogs, giving a very modern touch to a movie that in some ways could've made back in the mid-'60s, or at least in the '80s that Olive idealizes in a different way than Gen-Yers Erin and Garrett do in Distance.  Like Juno, she looks up to a time she wasn't even alive in.

On the one hand, it seems a bit much to believe that an entire high school (even in a small town) could get spun up about one girl losing her virginity to a college guy.  On the other, it's not like slut-shaming isn't alive and well, in the real and the cyber world.  I like how the movie argues that Olive's sexual experience is nobody's business, although of course this is ironic since we're meant to care about it as the audience.  Olive is a "good girl" in the sense that she's seventeen and never been grounded or sent to the principal's office, until the events of this story.

Her parents aren't as gruff as Juno's, but instead, as played by Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson, they are whimsical and playful, although still attentive and caring.  They're named Dill and Rosemary, and her kid brother is named Chip, so the whole family is "edible."  (I've heard that there's another brother, named Kale, off at college, and it's his nonexistent friend that Olive supposedly loses her "V-card" to.)

The other stand-outs in the cast are Thomas Haden Church as Mr. Griffith (his delivery on "Don't forget, tomorrow is Earth Day" understandably kept breaking Stone up) and Dan Byrd as Brandon, the gay friend whose plot thread is both poignant and funny.  But it's mostly Stone's movie, and she carries it well.  I don't feel like the movie is well structured, and some things, like Lisa Kudrow's betrayal, just seem to happen so that the movie can keep moving.  But overall, entertaining enough.  The "romance" tag by the way comes from her involvement with "Woodchuck Todd," played by Penn Badgley.

Andrew Fleming, writer/director of Threesome, has a bit role as a Doctor.  Yolanda Snowball, who was Mrs. Yeager in The Brady Bunch Movie, is a Receptionist here.