Movie review: “Easy A” doesn’t deserve an “A”

The movie "Easy A" is an easy movie to love—as long as it's not over-analyzed. The shining star of the movie is Emma Stone as Olive Penderghast. She is gorgeous, sexy, smart, funny and so wrong for the part. As the movie begins, relaxing music (that's reminiscent of the music played in Juno) plays and Olive starts to narrate her story. As she talks in a reflective manner, she confesses that she was previously "invisible" at school. In her words: "If Google Earth was a guy, he couldn't find me if I was dressed as a ten-story building." As soon as she says this, the audience is immediately convinced of the implausibility of the concept. For one thing, she is blatantly beautiful. Though she and Molly Ringwald are both fair-skinned and red-haired, she is no Molly Ringwald. She is too confident, too self-assured—practically a grown-up among high school babies. This makes the juvenile toil she undergoes all the more unconvincing. 

The plot is complicated: pressured by her inquiring friend, Olive lies, claiming that she lost her virginity, the "V card," to a random college guy. This is overheard by obnoxious Marianne Bryant (Amanda Bynes) and from there, the news travel fast. When Olive suggests that her gay friend, Brandon, should pretend that he is heterosexual to escape being bullied, it backfires on her. He begs her to pretend to have had sex with him; she gives in out of sympathy and allows the rumor to perpetuate. Whether she likes it or not, this signals to the larger community that she is now "open for business." Soon, a large number of suitors come and seek the same secret service she performed for Brandon.  She is labeled with the s-word as she generously helps the high school outcasts: the fat, the homosexual, the unpopular. From there on, she has to live the consequences of her small lies.

This is yet another teen movie for Amanda Bynes, who apparently can't escape the genre, although her role as the antagonist suggests that she may be slowly branching out. She plays the hardcore Christian voodoo nutcase, an exaggerated portrayal of a Bible worshipper, sure to offend many church-goers. The character was no doubt uniquely created to draw parallels with the novel "The Scarlet Letter," which the movie shamelessly over-references. 

To build a teen comedy on classic literature is a good idea. It allows a fresh take on things, and it has succeeded in the past (the movie "Clueless," based on Jane Austen's "Emma," is one of the top-ranked teen movies of all time). However, what differentiates "Easy A" from the successful cases is that it relies too heavily on the references. Much to the audience's annoyance, "The Scarlet Letter" is not the only source of inpsiration: Olive constantly gushes about the John Hughes movies, including "Sixteen Candles" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." It almost feels as if she's telling the audience that they should have stayed home and watched those films instead. Not a good way to sell a movie. 

The screenwriter, Bert V. Royal, has clearly proved that he has good taste in books and movies by making these references, but where is his movie? It is understood that teen movies are not supposed to be particularly soulful, but with "Easy A," the audience realizes that the movie they have just sat through is particularly soulless. The equation is only complete when the heroine of the movie overcomes her struggle and comes out stronger in the end. But Olive is, from beginning to end, perfectly poised and mostly straight-faced. Unfortunately, she lacks the vulnerability to make her a fitting heroine for the kind of movie that worships John Hughes and is based on "The Scarlet Letter."

None of this is intended as discouragement against selecting "Easy A" as a movie choice for Friday night. Though it does not deserve to be compared to some of the better teen romantic comedies, one of the better things about the movie is the actors who play the adults (not an ideal situation for a movie that is supposed to revolve around teenagers). Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci are marvelously funny as Olive's hippie parents. Anyone who loved Tucci's performance as Nigel in "The Devil Wears Prada" will equally appreciate his role as a once-gay-but-now-happily-and-heterosexually-married father to Olive. 

"Easy A" is now in theaters.