I’ve said before that some movies sure wear their inspirations on their sleeves. The ‘80s teen comedy genre is something that’s sorely been missing. When you find a movie with a true ‘80s vibe coming out now, it should be cause for celebration. You may think, judging by the trailer, that Easy A is aiming for the easy target of tweenage angst, but at least it sets its sights higher and longs for the yesteryears from when “A John Hughes Production” truly meant something.
With only his sophomore effort under his belt now, Will Gluck could be someone worth watching out for if the rest of his repertoire can live up to Easy A.(Gluck’s freshman film Fired Up! was a quickly dismissed guilty pleasure.) However, a lot of the credit needs to be shared with writer Bert V. Royal in his screenwriting debut. Calling to mind the likes of everything from Heathers to 10 Things I Hate About You along with everything in between from Mean Girls to Jawbreaker including a dash of The Girl Next Door and a slight shade of Juno, Royal absolutely revels in the teen comedies that ran the gamut of multiplexes during the true heyday of instant 80s teen comedies.
While Emma Stone may not be a household name quite yet, she’s instantly recognizable having co-starred in Zombieland, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, The House Bunny, The Rocker, and of course Superbad. Proving herself far more assured and even more promising than another overly famous redhead (Lindsay Lohan), Stone nails what it is like to be a misunderstood outcast, at least that’s what my fiancée tells me. Having never been a teenage girl, the more movies like this I see, the more thankful I am not a girl.
The plot is a tad overly convoluted, but that sort of adds to the film's charm as it seems to suffer from the same issues as the lead character, Olive Penderghast (Stone). Olive lives a seemingly normal life for considering herself such an outcast. She gets good grades at Ojai North High School, spends her free time listening to her best friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka) continually bitch about the 411 around school, and actually talks to her hilariously open and brazenly honest parents (Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson) while playing word games with peas or deciding which movie to watch for Best Family Winner Night as her father chooses to “Bucket List this bitches!”
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