Easy A (Review)

In the land of Hollywood, often only two types of high schools exist. There’s the R-rated, sex and booze crazed high schools, and there are the G-rated hand-holdin’ kids you see in shows or movies like High School Musical. The truth, obviously, lies happily in the middle. The new Emma Stone vehicle Easy A is able to find that ground, maintaining a requisite level of filth without turning into a collection of smut.

I would be incorrect, however, to call Easy A a realistic portrayal of the average American high school. Everything is far too polished to merit such distinction, and the cast is populated by endlessly beautiful people that seem to have fallen out of the pages of Tiger Beat. Its considerable success relies completely on the work of the cast, and you don’t need to look much further than your lead actress. Emma Stone has the potential to be a bona fide movie star, and Easy A could be a great stepping stone.

The film does not deal with ideas that are overtly revelatory, but like The Town the execution can excuse the premise. Stone plays Olive, a high-schooler who, in fear of admitting a weekend alone singing along to Natasha Bedingfield, fabricates a story about losing her virginity to a college guy. Intended merely to get her friend Rhiannon (Aly Michalka) off her back, the story is heard by the fundamentalist Marianne (Amanda Bynes, who is 24 and already resembles Joan Rivers) and the rumor spreads like wildfire. Soon Olive’s reputation is ever so slightly tainted, but she doesn’t mind much, as before she didn’t have much of a reputation. Soon she begins a faux-prostitution business, and throw in a few Nathaniel Hawthorne references and there you have it.

The film makes a big deal, particularly early on, of mocking all the usual teen movie clichés. These moments were my least favorite, as if the film itself is admitting that as a whole there is little originality to be seen. This mild hypocrisy is best exemplified in Penn Badgley’s character Todd. He is your stereotypical teen movie love interest, and the film itself has no interest in learning anything about him. I give the film credit for giving him the unglamorous role of team mascot, rather than having him ride up in his motorcycle then taking his helmet off in slow motion, but he never becomes anything but a face that makes Olive turn to goo.

That said, for every lull this film has, it is more than made up for by some incredibly hilarious sequences, none of which I will reveal here. Some of the gags miss (the Tom Cruise joke from the trailer falls with the anticipated thud) but the cast make the vast majority work. Olive’s parents are played by Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci, two actors you normally see in far different work, and they bring a realistic warmth to their roles that you don’t see in the bimbos or tyrants that are most movie parents. Also notable is the tragically underused Thomas Haden Church as Olive’s favorite teacher Mr. Griffith, and even Malcolm McDowell (who, as I wrote before, continues to cause the film equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder) is able to leave an impact as Principal Gibbons. Fred Armisen shows up randomly for two minutes.

Easy A was directed by Will Gluck, who is the perpetrator of last year’s Fired Up, but his “meh” work is saved by an “A” effort from just about everyone around him. This film is inevitably going to be compared to Mean Girls, and to that film Easy A stands up pretty well, though it lacks the same finesse. When the film stays firmly within Olive’s world and avoids some of the usual pratfalls it is one of the most enjoyable high school comedies in recent memory, but sometimes familiarity is just too enticing a road. In the end, it lives and dies on the pure joy that is Emma Stone, who has put together some pretty impressive work in the past few years, and a starring role in a good film like Easy A could be the gateway that is so well deserved. Based on what we’ve seen of late, asking for a high school comedy much better than this is just being too greedy.

Rating: (out of 4)