Movie Review - Easy A

Less than halfway into Easy A, Olive Penderghast, the tragic heroine of the film, tells the audience she wishes her life was more like a 1980s teen comedy — cutting to clips from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Breakfast Club to illustrate this point.

In the same flash, director Will Gluck and writer Bert V. Royal are telling us Easy A is their attempt to tap into their inner John Hughes. Usually, such a gratuitous reference is the signal of an homage gone horribly wrong. Fortunately, that is not the case in this film. With Easy A, Gluck and Royal pull off the rarest of feats: a smart, vibrant teen comedy for the millennial generation.

The story revolves around Olive (Emma Stone) — a well-meaning, attractive, but generally overlooked, teenager at a Southern California high school. Olive begins to attract attention, however, when her rival, a strict Christian student named Marianne (Amanda Bynes), overhears Olive lie to her best friend Rhiannon (Aly Michalka) about losing her virginity to a college boy. Rumor quickly spreads and Olive develops a reputation. Things really begin to get out of hand when Olive pretends to sleep with her gay friend Brandon (Dan Byrd) to stop his victimization by homophobic bullies. Other students from the bottom of the high school food chain hear of her generosity and begin propositioning her for similar favors, eventually forcing Olive to try to reclaim her reputation.

In her first crack at a major leading role, Stone shines. The actress, best known for her turns in Superbad and Zombieland, makes Olive quirky, edgy and likable all at the same time. She’s like a more grounded version of Juno.

The rest of the cast also turns in a strong performance. Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson are riotous as Olive’s bizarre but loving parents. Thomas Haden-Church is marvelously dry as Olive’s English teacher, who introduces her to The Scarlet Letter. This helps Olive develop her reputation, as she begins to embroider red A’s on her newly scandalous wardrobe — hence the title of the film. Lisa Kudrow is energetic and snappy as the high school guidance counselor. Bynes does her best to bring something new to the oft-done hypocritical high school Jesus freak role while Penn Badgely, better known as Gossip Girl’s Dan, doesn’t overdo it as Olive’s understanding love interest.

Easy A probably doesn’t rank up there with Ferris or The Breakfast Club too often it goes for the obvious raunch, when instead its strength lies in its subtle and sometimes touching look at the difficulties of the high school social wilderness. In the same way Hughes was able to capture the essence of teenage angst in the Reagan era, Gluck and Royal are able to tap into the struggles of being a high schooler in the age of Facebook and iPhones. Olive doesn’t just break the fourth wall like Ferris, she tells us her story over a live webcast. And while that may seem impersonal and even a bit hackneyed, it isn’t. It’s simultaneously intimate and accessible.

It’s this combination of Hughesian earnestness and modern sensibility that makes Easy A a winner.

Noteworthy News:

Director Will Gluck will re-team with Patricia Clarkson and Emma Stone to make Friends With Benefits— a comedy starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis as two busy professionals who decide to sleep with each other, no strings attached. Stone is also attached to the film adaptation of The Help— Kathryn Stockett’s popular novel about African-American maids working in white households in 1960s Mississippi.