Easy A

Last year, director Will Glick brought us Fired Up, one of the worst teen comedies in recent memory. This year, he brings us Easy A, which is one of the best teen comedies in recent memory. What a difference a script makes. The screenplay here by Bert V. Royal is smart, objective, current, and most of all, hilariously funny. With a lot of mainstream comedies, you're lucky if you get one laugh out loud moment. This one has many.

Having seen Easy A, I firmly believe two things. One is that it's going to be remembered alongside such films as Clueless, Mean Girls, and Election as a teen comedy that speaks directly to its intended audience, but is smart enough for adults to get involved. The other is that this is going to be a star-making role for Emma Stone, an actress who has done very good work in films like The House Bunny and Zombieland, and gets her first chance at a leading role here. It requires her to be intelligent, sarcastic, and vulnerable, and she pulls it off beautifully. She has no problem at all carrying the film, and immediately gets the respect and sympathy of the audience. After this performance, I can't wait to see her grow into more adult roles.

She stars as Olive Penderghast, a smart 17-year-old who is tired of everyone not noticing her. She's a normal and kind of boring girl with parents who are not only laid back and supportive, but also loving. They're played by Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson, both hysterical. It's a refreshing change of pace in a teen comedy to see parents who are calm and keep up with their daughter's life, rather than the clueless buffoons we usually get in these movies. Olive is tired of being boring, so she decides to tell a little white lie to her best friend, Rhiannon (Aly Michalka). The lie suggests that she spent the past weekend losing her virginity with a college guy. Naturally, the lie is overheard by Marianne (Amanda Bynes), the school's self-righteous gossip and leader of the Christian fellowship group. It does not take long for Olive's story of made up sex to spread through the halls, and become bigger than it originally was.

Rather than being embarrassed, Olive becomes inspired. She uses this as an opportunity to create a new image for herself, one that is bigger than she ever was normally. She also decides to make a sarcastic statement about many of the rumors that begin to spread about her sexual escapades. Inspired by the fact that she is reading The Scarlet Letter in her literature class, she decides to sew a big scarlet "A" on the front of her clothes. This not only gives her even more attention, but also inspires many fellow students just like her, who don't stand out in any way, and just want high school to be over. They want to create new lives for themselves as well, and begin offering to pay Olive for the chance to pretend to have sex with them.

Where the story goes from there, I will not reveal, but Easy A is smart enough not to fall into the traps that many lesser teen comedies fall into. It never descends into flat-out fantasy, and is grounded by some very sharp observational humor and wonderful dialogue scenes. One of the better moments is a scene where Olive talks to her favorite teacher, Mr. Griffith (Thomas Hayden Church). He tells her how modern teens feel the need to share their every action via computers or other communication devices. It's not just a well-written and timely scene, but also kind of the heart at the center of the story. The more Olive reveals about her "new self", the more exaggerated it becomes, and the more it begins to backfire. If Olive's life spirals out of control, it's all because she was too willing to share too much information with everyone around her.

It's a cautionary tale, and one that today's youth can definitely take to heart, but it's also a lot of fun. Olive narrates the film via a webcast that the film periodically cuts to, and her narration is full of intelligence and pop culture references that are actually amusing. I especially love the way she recaps the story of The Scarlet Letter, then advises the audience to watch the original movie, not the Demi Moore version. The movie also has a great ear for dialogue, and a wonderful cast assembled to perform it. While Emma Stone clearly walks away with the film, there are a number of memorable supporting performances, especially from Tucci and Clarkson as her parents. The cast is not wasted here. Every character gets at least one scene to stand out or make an impression.

Easy A is a comedy that really works. It earns its laughs, it has a lot of things to say, and it's been put together extremely well. We like Olive almost the instant we meet her, and then we care about her quite a lot near the end. We like her because she's smart, and we like the movie because it shares her intelligence. That's a rare thing for any film, which is what makes this a great one.

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