Easy A

Review by Anthony Morris

How's this for high concept comedy : a teen version of The Scarlet Letter?

It's the perfect setting : after all, it's not like high school isn't the kind of environment where a young woman's sexual activities aren't under the microscope.

Of course, it'd have to be a comedy - for some reason all successful teen versions of classics end up being comedies - so the girl can't have actually had sex...

So how about having her just say she's had sex, have the rumour spiral out of control, and then let her discover that maybe she can use the rumour mill to her advantage for once? And there you have the core of Easy A.

It might not sound all that promising in summary, mostly because it turns out that making a movie about adultery without actual adultery is kind of confusing so the script is constantly rushing around tying off loose ends involving characters that we don't really care about.

Things get even more muddled towards the end when the moral turns out to be lies are bad but not all lies and sometimes people are just jerks, which might be realistic but hardly makes for a neat ending. 

Fortunately Emma Stone as heroine Olive is both charming and engaging, and if the overall story is a little wobbly, individual scenes - especially involving Patricia Clarkson and  Stanley Tucci as Olive's impossibly funny and perfect parents - are often hilarious. 

Easy A might aspire to (and heavily reference) the classic teen movies of the 1980s without ever quite reaching their heights, but in its' confusion – Olive literally spends the second half of the film going to school in her underwear - it hits the mark more than most.

3.5 out of 5

Easy A
Australian release: 16th September, 2010
Official Site: Easy A
Cast: Emma Stone, Penn Badgley, Amanda Bynes, Thomas Haden Church, Patricia Clarkson
Director: Will Gluck