We’ve all been there. Some of us barely survived while other consider it one of the best times of our lives. I’m talking of course about high school. It was a place you thought at the time was everything and it ended up barely being a blimp on your radar as an adult. The worst part of high school was the rumors. You were who people said you were, even if it wasn’t the truth. Would it have been easier to just go along with the lies? Let’s find out how that works for out heroine in Easy A?
Emma Stone plays Olive, a girl who is invisible to everyone in her school, that is until she starts a rumor about herself. She tells a little lie about sleeping with a guy and soon she’s letting boys say they slept with her in exchange for Home Depot and Best Buy giftcards. Soon the rumors start getting out of hand and Olive finds herself in a complicated plot that belongs on Gossip Girl. Luckily for Stone’s character Penn Badgley from The CW show just happens to be the guy she crushing on in this film. Olive must find a way to get back her dignity and her friends before it not only destroys her life, but everyone around hers as well.
I liked Emma Stone in Superbad and Zombieland, and I think this film finally helps showcase her talents. She’s good at playing the smart and sassy girl. She has great comedic timing in this film and she has a lot of under the breath comments that make me want to get it on DVD; mainly because the rest of audience was laughing too loud for me to hear them all.
Stone's supporting cast were all people we've seen in our own high school experiences. Amanda Bynes plays the good christian girl who turns the school against Olive and her promiscuous ways. Lisa Kudrow is the guidance counselor who is as lost as the students, Thomas Hayden Church is the cool teacher, and one of my favorite actors, Malcolm McDowell, plays the tough principal.
Of course the real laugh-out-loud moments came from veteran actors Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson who play Olive’s progressive parents. Their non-discipline parenting seemed goofy as they tried to guess what bad word their daughter said to get in detention, or their excitement over the possibility of their daughter having a boyfriend, even if he may be gay. The family unit worked so well off each other it made me jealous I wasn’t a part of their family.
But with all this focus on the rumors I felt like Stone’s true love story with Badgley’s character didn’t get the attention it needed. However Stone does such a good job making us care about her character we only smile when she finds love. There was also an effect used in the film I call “gossip speed” in which the camera toured the high school seeing how fast rumors spread. Although this trick was kind of smart for the message of the film the over usage of it made me want to almost hurl from all the fast and sloppy camera movements.
Why this film wasn’t released in June or August I don’t know because it was easily more entertaining than most of the comedies I saw this summer, or chose not to see at least. Anyone who went to high school and is old enough to look back at it with a sense of humor will enjoy this film. Stone’s witty humor makes her sexy and her supporting cast is icing on the cake in this film about high school, 2.0.
Rating: B-
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