Movie Review: Easy A

In Easy A, Olive- played by the never-better Emma Stone- attempts to dance around the high-school gossip machine but consequently finds herself tangled in its web. Similarly, the film, written by first-time screenwriter Bert V. Royal, lovingly tackles many high-school movie conventions but only rarely manages to truly transcend them. Royal also wrote “Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead.”

In the film, Olive, after reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, begins wearing the letter “A” on her chest to signify the never-expanding accounts of her lustful activity, the only catch being that she didn’t actually participate in any of them. Not to worry, though, the entire fiasco is actually orchestrated by Olive herself, who despite the occasional run-ins with super-Christian Marianne (Amanda Bynes), is paid by members of the opposite sex to go along with whatever sexually proactive gossip they can muster for themselves. Consequently, Olive finds that her actions are beginning to define her and she may risk digging a hole she cannot climb out of. Olive’s story is very funny and poignant throughout, but is a little too safe in the process.

The humor in the film revolves almost solely around Royal’s dialogue, which in all its cleverness sounds slightly out of place when spoken by the student characters. It fares much better in the hands of the adults; whose rank includes surprising heavyweights Thomas Hayden-Church, Patricia Clarkson and the wonderful Stanley Tucci. Olive’s scenes in the company of the veterans flow the easiest are, in turn, the funniest scenes in the film. Clarkson and Tucci are particularly effective as Olive’s snarky parents whose advice is often purposefully anti-climactic. However, the fact that they are the most interesting characters in the film poses a problem. In the school setting, Olive is the only character who isn’t completely flat. The rest of the school is segregated between the unnaturally witty “good guy” characters and the gossiping dimwits who propel Olive’s myth. If we are to believe Easy A isn’t the typical genre fair, we must be presented with more than one dynamite character.

Nevertheless, there is a lot to like in Easy A. Emma Stone single-handedly carries the emotional weight of the film from scene to scene with great ease providing that she is, in fact, leading lady material. Despite the many references to genre conventions, the film feels fresh overall and lands itself in the positive end of the high-school movie canon.

Having said that, a little extra character depth and fine-tuning would do wonders to a film that sometimes gets too tangled in the gossip.

Posted by Matt Chambers on Oct 1 2010. Filed under Features, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.