Flick Flak: Easy A
Easy A
Director: Will Gluck
Starring: Emma Stone, Stanley Tucci.
15, 92mins
This is going to be a short review as I am trying to write up a crazy weekend of SWN festival action. However, in between staying up all night watching bands I managed to get to the cinema to watch this offering from director Will Gluck, who has done little of note until now. I'll be honest, I was initially enticed to see this by a fairly substantial crush on Emma Stone (what can I say, it's the red hair), but it turns out that this is a truly decent movie.
As a film it inevitably bears comparison to Mean Girls: both are cliché-baiting tales of a girl at high school, told in an ironic and witty way. And both have the impressive trait of taking the first-time watcher by surprise by being really quite funny. Easy A is not quite Mean Girls, but it is a good film which earns its place alongside the Lindsay Lohan vehicle.
Easy A is told in narrative flashback by Olive Penderghast (Stone) as she describes the reality behind how she gained the reputation of being the school floozy - by agreeing to help a bullied boy pretend to be straight by faking a night / few minutes of passion with him. Things escalate as she discovers an inability to say no to others who need such 'help', and soon she realises that even though none of it was real, lying still has consequences. Based on The Scarlet Letter, it is a plot which could have descended into schmaltz too often to be bearable, but thankfully the writing kept it at a high level of laughs instead, and the heartfelt moments were done well too. That said, it does dip its toe in the waters of sentimentality by the end, but it's a rare film indeed that does not. The film endeared itself to me also through its loving references of the films of John Hughes (Ferris Bueller's Day Off being one of my all-time favourites) as well as 80s movies in general. As Olive says at one point, why can't my life have been directed by John Hughes?
The bulk of the laughs comes from the quick script and some amazing delivery by the actors. The film is Emma Stone's from the start, and she is becoming number one choice for sass and comedic talent (see Superbad and Zombieland.) However, her supporting cast are brilliant, especially her parents, Patricia Clarkson and the legend that is Stanley Tucci. He in particular is irrepressible, at one point turning to his young, adopted, (black) son and asking "So, where are you from originally?" Also great is Dan Byrd, playing the gay guy who first asks Olive's help. Their 'love-making' is one of the funniest pretend sex scenes I have seen. Not that I can claim to have seen many.
So, I wanted to quickly knock up this review to urge people to go see Easy A, as I was pleasantly surprised by it. It deserves to get a better box office return than I fear it will.
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2 Comments – Post a comment
neilramsden
Commented 19 months ago - 26th October 2010 - 14:27pm
Argh. If I'd spent a bit more time on this I'd have brought up how much I liked the message of the film towards open- mindedness, indepedence and religion. Too late now though.
Critique
Commented 19 months ago - 26th October 2010 - 21:12pm
You also forgot to mention how much you liked that Emma Stone spent the majority of the film in lingerie...