This movie starts with our highly intelligent main character Olive Penderghast (played by Emma Stone) web logging the about the events of the film. The story Olive tells starts out with her talking about a date she has with a nonexistent boy who her goes to college with her brother to her best friend (played by former Disney star Alyson Michalka). After the weekend, Olive (not wanting to admit "George" wasn't real) ends up saying that she had lost her virginity over the weekend. The school "Jesus freak" named Marianne (played by Amanda "Oh-my-god-she's-still-around-and-is-funny" Bynes) overhears this "religious transgression" and spreads the news around. Soon her gay friend Brandon (played by Dan Byrd) asks her to help him pretend he's straight so he can stop having such a hard time socially. After getting both threatening and lustful looks from other students, she becomes a sort of "school slut", donning a red "A" on all her clothes - a la Scarlett Letter (the original, not the one with Demi Moore) - and giving fake sexual experiences to other loser or outcast students in exchange for gift cards and the like. Eventually she wants her good reputation back, and in short, hilarity ensues.
The writing and dialogue between characters is wonderful. Most of the theater, including myself, was roaring with laughter through a good majority of the film (and by the way, never once does this movie go for an unnecessary sexual joke), and even the scenes that are meant to show more emotion never get too heavy-handed without picking themselves right back up. The cast of characters is amazingly strong, especially people like Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive's parents (my pick for funniest characters in this movie), Thomas Haden Church as Olive's favorite teacher, and even brief couple of scenes with Malcolm McDowell as the school principal. They made Emma Stone look average and ugly while at the same time very sexy. Even all the other 20-year-old actors and actresses who play high-school students actually make me believe they're teens through the magic acting. Later on in the film, it openly admits to wanting be a 1980s John Hughes movie, and while I haven't seen very many 1980s John Hughes films (I will fix that, I promise), I believe Easy A really succeeds at doing just that.
Now to be honest, I think I'd really need a second viewing of this movie to really decipher what this it is trying to say about things like promiscuity in teenagers, sexuality in society as a whole, other things like Christian extremism in public high school or if it's trying to say anything at all. All I really know is that this is by far one of the funniest and most well-written films I have seen in recent memory. Even as a teenager currently in high school, I laugh at this as a parody and possible commentary on my society. There's more than a few situations and characters I can really connect to here whether it be directly or indirectly, and I think that is why this one really hits home with me.
Even at the full ticket price, Easy A was worth every cent. There weren't any special visual things that made it stand out, but with a crowd and with some buddies I really feel I got the most out of this film. I highly recommend you see this picture, and see it soon with friends. It's just an all-around well done movie. I shall give the film Easy A 94/100 points. Man, I really need to get some bad stuff to review. Anyone want to go see Devil?
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