Easy A
Three and a half out of four stars
Rated: 14A
Full marks to Easy A, a razor-sharp teen comedy that carries the world-weary angst and acerbic high-school social strata observations of John Hughes into 2010 with quick-witted success.
Fresh from its Toronto International Film Festival premiere last week, the movie opens wide today.
Webcams and texting replace the tear-stained diary pages and endless hours on the phone as confessional in newcomer screenwriter Bert V. Royal’s fresh and lively script,. It pops with clever dialogue that actually sounds like teen talk. And the cast, which ranges from veterans like Lisa Kudrow and Stanley Tucci, to bound-for-stardom 21-year-old Emma Stone in the leading role, is equal to the material.
The means of the high-school rumour mill may have changed but the desire for popularity remains, with echoes of Heathers, Election and Mean Girls and the entire Hughes canon in Easy A. And Royal fully acknowledges his inspiration with frequent Hughes’ movie name-checks and visual treats throughout the script.
Super-smart (and a delightful smart-aleck) Olive Penderghast (Stone, perfect) yearns to get a toehold in the “cool” category at school. Perpetually ignored, she figures she’ll tart up a description of a weekend exploit for best pal Rhiannon (Aly Michalka).
But it’s overheard by the wrong person: uptight God squader Marianne. Played by Amanda Bynes with so much self-righteousness she all but begs for a cream pie in the face, it’s not too long before Marianne makes sure the Facebook/text/Twitter jungle drums are frantically tapping out variations on “Olive is a skank.”
As long as she has the name, Olive may as well play the game.
She uses her newfound slut status to rehabilitate her own geeky reputation and those of her loser classmates, starting with her “Kinsey 6” gay friend Brandon.
Soon she’s worked out a pay-what-you-can scheme (rep rehab doesn’t come free) where the geeks, freaks and fatties buy bad-ass points, letting Olive shore up their reputations by ruining her own. You can get a lot of hallway cred for a $200 Gap gift card.
A little English-class inspiration (they’re reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 19th-century intolerance and morality tale, The Scarlet Letter) leads Olive to take literature literally, lifting a fashion tip from Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne by sewing a letter A on the trashy new wardrobe she’s bought herself.
Her teacher (Thomas Haden Church) worries Olive may be taking things too far — although he’s got his own troubles, while his wife (Kudrow), the school guidance counsellor, could use a little guidance herself. Crusty principal Gibbons (Malcolm McDowell) doesn’t care who is doing what, as long as the school’s reputation shines.
At home, Olive gets plenty of support from hippie-dippy parents Dill (Tucci) and Rosemary (Patricia Clarkson) along with some serious comedic competition.
A scene where they try to guess a sexually charged insult Olive has used at school without saying the word in front of a younger son is hilarious.
Of course there’s romance afoot. Olive is pining for her own version of Sixteen Candles’ Jake Ryan: Woodchuck Todd (Penn Badgley), so named because he plays the school mascot, a fakely ferocious woodchuck.
Stone, who impressed in Superbad and more than held her own in Zombieland, is perfect as Olive, blessed with fresh good looks and enviable comic timing.
You may well wonder why Olive wears the A. After all, she’s not a Hester Prynne-like adulteress. Truth to tell, she’s actually a virgin. The answer is easy: A is for awesome.
Linda Barnard is a syndicated Toronto Star movie critic.