Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.
This is the twelfth in a series of twelve movies selected by Nick Jobe.
Teen comedies aren’t easy to do well. This is evidenced by the vast amount of teen comedies that are light on the comedy. Many of the best ones get help by more or less co-opting classic stories and putting a teen spin on them. Enter Easy A, a modern teenage version of “The Scarlet Letter” with the twist that the action that earns our heroine the metaphorical (and eventually literal) letter is entirely a fiction, a lie that went out of control. Hey, if you’re going to crib from someone, you may as well crib from a classic, right?
High schooler Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) finds herself in the position of school nobody…and immediately I take issue with Easy A. High school may be multiple decades in my past (my 30-year reunion is in the rearview mirror), but I remember enough of it. I remember enough to know that if Emma Stone was walking around in a high school, she’d have to have the equivalent of social rabies to be completely ignored. But hey, let’s ignore that for the time being. We have a movie to look at, and if that’s the biggest problem with it, well, we have a pretty good movie to look at.
Anyway, Olive is invited to go camping by her friend Rhiannon (Aly Michalka, also too impossibly attractive to be a teenage outcast) and her hippie parents. Needing a way to beg off the trip, Olive invents a date with a freshman in college. She instead spends her weekend at home, but on Monday, pressured by Rhiannon, Olive accidentally admits to losing her virginity despite the fact that the guy in question doesn’t really exist. Unfortunately for Olive, the conversation is overheard by the high school’s equivalent of the Christian Taliban, Marianne (Amanda Bynes).
And suddenly, Olive is the school tramp. When a gay student (Dan Byrd) comes to her and begs her to lie about the two of them hooking up, she agrees to help him out, and the two fake having sex at a party. And with that, the rumor mill starts churning. Suddenly, Olive is the school slut for the majority of the students, but the school’s nerdy underclass knows the truth. Olive sets up a little business for herself, allowing social rejects to claim they had sex with her in exchange for gift cards. Deciding to go full-bore with her new persona, Olive decks herself out in highly sexualized clothing and sews a red “A” on everything, essentially transforming herself into Hester Prynne, which happens to be the book she is studying.
Along the way, Olive also uncovers her own share of dirt, including an affair between hyper-religious Marianne’s boyfriend (Cam Gigandet) and the school guidance counsellor (Lisa Kudrow), who happens to be married to Olive’s favorite teacher (Thomas Haden Church). Toss in small roles for Malcolm McDowell as the school principal, Fred Armisen as a local pastor, and Stanly Tucci and my beloved Patricia Clarkson as Olive’s parents, and you have a movie with a monster cast, a solid plot, and even an attempt at a comedy version of a morality play.
So what’s the problem? Well, there is a problem here, and it’s the kind of problem it’s difficult to fault Easy A for too much. It’s simply too clever. I expect that the personalities will be larger than life in a typical comedy, and that’s definitely the case here. Everyone is turned up to 11 all the time. In that respect, Easy A reminds me a great deal of Juno, which is also a movie that is too clever for its own good. Easy A gives up any attempt at realism to go for being smart beyond its high school years. I get that. It’s probably even the right choice for this movie, but it still makes the world of the film something that doesn’t exist outside of the film itself.
Having said that, I’m not sure how much I can really downgrade the film for it, because Easy A wouldn’t be the film it is without this. Yes, Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson are impossibly cool parents in this. But it’s Stanley Tucci and the transcendent Patricia Clarkson, dammit! I can forgive a pull away from reality for that.
So, really, the biggest problem with Easy A is that it doesn’t track to reality at all. And I’m pretty much okay with that. The story is good enough that the departure from anything like the real world is more or less warranted. It takes the piss out of a lot of people, and I like it for that. It completely takes the piss out of the holier-than-thou clique, and I love it for that. Sure, my high school days ended in the ‘80s, but I grew up in the town that, according to the wonks at Trivial Pursuit, has more churches per capita than any other town in America (check out the Wikipedia page for Wheaton, IL, if you don’t believe me). I’ll forgive a hell of a lot more than an alternate reality to see the Jesus posse knocked down multiple pegs.
So, it’s a solid win, Nick. It’s not perfect, but it’s entertaining.
As a final note I won’t be doing any list challenges for next year. I’ll explain that in more detail in about 12 days.
Why to watch Easy A: It’s smarter than it has any right to be.
Why not to watch: Like Juno, it’s a little smarter and hipper than is plausible.
I liked this one a lot more than I thought I would. Teenage comedies as a genre is getting really old and increasingly stupid, or maybe it is just me getting older and out of touch with the young and the hip. But Easy A struck a note. Sure, you are right, the characters are too cool for this to be realistic, but the themes behind are relevant and real enough and as you, any movie that kick the religious self-rightous in the butt gets a plus in my book.
ReplyDeleteThat's probably what resonated with me the most. My home town was a place I couldn't get out of fast enough because of the overwhelming religious influence. This was despite my being relatively religious at the time.
DeleteI don't know that teen comedies have gotten dumber. They've just gotten cruder.
I really enjoyed this too, not surprising given I was essentially the target audience. Emma Stone is so darn watchable (though I agree about her outcast status. C'mon Hollywood!). I like that it is smart, way better than going for cliched lowest-common denominator stuff.
ReplyDeleteReally, that's what works here. There is a target demographic here (and it's not 40-something white guys) and it never talks down to that audience. At its heart, it's simple but it's never simplistic. It gets a lot of points for treating a young audience like something other than a pack of drooling morons.
DeleteThis was a tremendous amount of fun partly I think because it didn't try and present too much as unquestionably true. It was more a twist on a fable and the perfect cast played it that way.
ReplyDeleteIt reminded me slightly of Juno though I liked this far more. Juno was too earnestly important (and overpraised) and outside of Allison Janney and JK Simmons not as appealingly cast.
With this it tried to make a point or two but the general air was "Let's have fun with this!". Helping push that along are as you mentioned the brilliant team of Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson, the ultra cool Thomas Haden Church, Lisa Kudrow turning her ditz persona towards the dark side and even the pre meltdown Amanda Bynes is fun as the holy roller. But the ultimate success of the story rest squarely on Emma Stone's shoulders and she more than delivers. You want everything to work out for Olive and for her to end up with the sweet and dreamy Woodchuck Todd because Stone makes her so likable and accessible. It's easy to see why it set her on the path to stardom.
It also helps that the film is efficiently directed and paced and just breezes along.
I agree with all of this, including the fact that it's superior in just about every way to the overrated Juno. And yes, it really does hang on Emma Stone (who still can't really be a high school nobody), but the supporting cast is pretty grand.
DeleteIt's been ages since I've seen this, though I remember Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson stealing every scene they were in. I remember loving this movie in general, and I never had a problem with "these kids are not realistic." Because, really, that's almost every TV show or movie involving teens or preteens. (I mean, I grew up with Power Rangers, which is ALL that). I just go along with the story and characters.
ReplyDeleteI'm bummed you aren't doing another list, but I understand! If I weren't getting married and doing who knows all what next year, I'd start up another blog and take on a few challenges myself.
Yeah, I get that. It's a knock against the movie, but a really small knock since the entire movie turns on it and it would be a lot less entertaining were it different. Olive is too witty to be a real teen, but she's not nearly as annoying as Juno.
DeleteI didn't feel that Easy A tried as hard as Juno to be clever. It does fall into a similar zone with high school students that always have the right thing to say. But Emma Stone was charming enough to make it click here. I didn't expect much from Easy A, so it really surprised me.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you 100% on this. It's a little sad that Juno got all of the Oscar appreciation based on that, though.
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