Yeah, I know, my first piece for Blogcritics, and I cop out and take the most obvious title one could think of. OK, but here's the thing: Easy A really is a terrific little film.
Emma Stone plays Olive, a typically awkward teenage girl, which is to say a typically awkward movie version of an awkward teenage girl. We're supposed to look at her and believe she isn't movie-star-caliber beautiful but that she instead would never turn the boys' heads. And she pulls it off.
Olive tells a little white lie one day, claiming to have lost her virginity to an older boy. The story spreads across the school like the cliched wildfire, and suddenly Olive is the alleged school slut. She turns entrepreneur, allowing boys who pay her to claim that they had sex so that they can be hailed as sexual conquering heroes.
The result is, like 10 Things I Hate About You, a clever, albeit much less literal, retelling of a lit classic, in this case The Scarlet Letter. Olive willing shoulders the labels her peers impose upon her, undergoing the typical self-discovery as she does.
OK, it's all a bit cliched: the awkward girl discovers she is really beautiful inside and out, that boys can like her just the way she is, but it's not handled in a cliched way at all. Stone turns in a star-making performance, showing she has charm enough to shoulder a movie all on her own.
And yet she doesn't have to go it alone. How's this for a supporting cast: Thomas Haden Church, Lisa Kudrow, Stanley Tucci, and Malcolm McDowell. And while she may not have the name value of those heavyweights, Amanda Bynes turns in a fine performance as Olive's snooty, snotty rival, and Fred Armisen turns in a very funny cameo.
.jpg?t=20130517094513)
Article comments
1 - Nard4Reynard
Although it's not funny, it's quite entertaining. Actually, this movie tells a teenager story. We can see a teenager have pressures on her.