EASY A

High school comedies tend to come in cycles.  Once every ten years or so, someone manages to put a fresh spin on the genre which sets the bar for the next decade’s worth of proms and finals.  Featuring an effortless star turn by Emma Stone, and a fast paced hilarious script by Bert V. Royal, Easy A looks like the one to beat.


In the same way that Clueless transplanted Jane Austen to Beverly Hills and 10 Things I Hate About You set Shakespeare in Tacoma, Easy A brings Nathaniel Hawthorne to Ojai.  The difference is in the way the source material is integrated.  Amy Heckerling doesn’t mention Jane Austen at all in Clueless, and Shakespeare only gets the occasional wink in 10 Things.  Here director Will Gluck gives us a class of high schoolers reading Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter with Stone’s character, Olive, making a concerted effort to turn herself into a high school Hester Prynne. 


It all begins innocently enough.  Olive and her best friend Rhiannon ( Alyson Michalka ) are discussing their weekend plans, and Rhiannon invites Olive to go camping with her and her parents.  Flashback to the last time Olive had to hang out with Rhiannon’s creepy folks, and we realize that an encore just isn’t in the cards.  Forced to come up with an excuse on the spot, Olive makes up a date with a nonexistent college boy.  She dodges the bullet, and happily spends a weekend doing nothing but listening to an annoyingly catchy musical greeting card.


Forced to explain her date once the girls are back at school, she ups the ante by claiming that the college boy took her virginity.  High schoolers can’t be expected to keep this kind of news to themselves, and by lunch Olive finds herself with a startling new reputation as the school tramp.  After the initial shock wears off, Olive finds that she enjoys the attention and decides to ride the wave and see where it takes her.


Easy A’s great conceit is that the illusion of sex can be just as powerful as the act itself, especially in the realm of high school.  For Olive, it’s only a matter of days before her classmates recognize her power and want a taste of it for them selves.  To Brandon (well played by Dan Byrd),if word got out that he had slept with Olive, his classmates might stop tormenting him for being gay.  Recognizing a fellow misfit when she sees one, Olive agrees.  A fictional tryst is conspicuously staged, and soon pseudo suitors are lining up, purchasing pieces of Olive’s rep with a parade of gift cards.

 
As Royal’s script points out, she ends up achieving something closer to infamy than popularity.  Unfortunately, Hester Prynne’s remedy of bearing her punishment in silence is not in the cards for the gregarious Olive, so she ends of staging one final attention grabbing display in order to set the record straight.


It’s hard to overstate how much Emma Stone owns this movie.  Even if the rest of the picture were terrible, Easy A would be worth seeing for her performance alone.  As it is, Stone clearly recognizes great material when she sees it, and after winning supporting turns in Superbad and Zombieland, this should be the movie that makes her a household name. 


It also helps that Gluck has surrounded his leading lady with ringers.  Malcolm McDowell brings his trademark authority to a small but pivotal role as the high school principal, and Thomas Haden Church and Lisa Kudrow head up a supporting cast that also includes Patricia Clarkson, Stanley Tucci and Amanda Bynes. 


One could be forgiven for feeling that Stone’s character is more than a little too good to be true.  The idea that someone as attractive and witty as Olive can only get attention by parading around with a Scarlet A on her chest is more than a bit of a stretch, but when the end result is this entertaining, most viewers will be willing to suspend their disbelief.


Will Gluck has tested these waters before.  His last picture, Fired Up was an entertaining trip through cheerleading camp, and the man clearly knows his high school films.  Before Easy A reaches its satisfying conclusion, John Hughes has been invoked through dialogue, clips, and soundtrack songs, and we even get a reenactment of a scene from Patrick Dempsey’s Can’t Buy Me Love for good measure.  Hughes made a star out of Anthony Hall in Sixteen Candles, but Easy A just may prove that there’s a new geek in town.


Easy A opens in theatres on Friday, September 17th.

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