Easy A

Director: Will Gluck
Writer: Burt Royal
Starring: Emma Stone, Penn Badgley
Release Date: September 17, 2010
Length: 1 hour 32 minutes

If you want your social life to have a reputation in high school, become a slut. If you want your movie to have a good reputation in Hollywood, hire Emma Stone to star in it. Stone has yet again struck out in a hilarious movie that suits her dry humor perfectly. Director Will Gluck has Stone playing a modern day Hester Prin in an original clever teen comedy Easy A. In Ojai, California, teenage girl, Olive (Stone) feels like an outcast in her high school. When she lies to her best friend, Riannon (Aly Michalka) about losing her virginity, the story spreads around her school quickly causing her innocent status to go down the drain. Soon after, Olive adds to her repertoire by helping out her gay friend, Brandon (Dan Byrd), when he and her pretend to have sex at a party, where everyone in her high school is. Gradually, as she helps out more virgin losers that want a reputation, Olive’s sweet life turns in on her, as she loses her friends, her ethics and her dignity. With this movie, Emma Stone has fully completed her non-scandalous reputation as Hollywood’s favourite funny girl. There are tons of hilarious women working in the business, like Tina Fey or Kristen Wiig, but Stone is so surprising because of her age. I can love a girl teen comedy as a guilty pleasure usually, but I have yet to enjoy a teen comedy, starring a girl, where I have laughed as much as I did during Easy A. Whether it’s her beauty or her awkwardness or her wit, Emma Stone commands the screen. Emma Stone has a deadpan humor that no other teen film starlet has ever possessed, which attracts both young people and adults. I think of Amanda Bynes, who was cute and funny, but her audiences were only ever 10-15 year old girls. Bynes coincidentally is in Easy A as well. Bynes plays bitchy, Christian girl Marianne who enjoys seeing Olive suffer. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stand Bynes’ fake, caricature performance, which is so sad because she used to sit in the chair that Stone now sits in. Disney star Aly Michalka makes a glorious leap from kids comedy to more adult comedy playing Olive’s outspoken, crude best friend Rihannon. She deserves to stay in good adult comedy because I respect her so much more now when she’s in such a funny movie. Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson also give funny performances as Olive’s weird parents. The writing of this film was pretty amazing, but I will never know if I would have enjoyed it if Emma Stone were not in it. Screenwriter Burt Royal however did create such an inventive story, with the most absurd scenes, including a montage of Olive’s uneventful weekend, listening to the same song in her room, the whole time, achieving absolutely nothing. The lines were quick and surprising, making me laugh way more than I expected to. Of course in every teen comedy (let alone teen movie), there needs to be at least a little romance and Easy A perfectly had the right amount of it between Emma Stone and Penn Badgley, who plays Olive’s childhood friend Tood. There wasn’t too much romance to overshadow the comedy or storyline. There was just enough to make you go “Aww”. This is one of those movies that is smart enough for adults to enjoy, but sweet enough for teenage girls to obsess over.It also doesn’t hurt that this movie has a lot of John Hughes references, who is one my favourite directors. Easy A is by far, one of the best teenage romantic comedies that has come out in a long time.