Easy A (DVD)

What a delightfully charming and fun movie! I had wanted to see Easy A in theaters but never got around to it. My expectations were for it to be cute and funny but I wasn't ready for how good it actually is. It's an homage to the great John Hughes films of the 90s in a way (Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, etc.) but is also a sort of modern retelling of The Scarlett Letter. Also, and obviously, it's updated for this generation with lots of references to texting and Facebook and the main storytelling technique is a webcam.
Easy A follows Olive (Emma Stone), a pop culture fast talker who is smart as a whip and also a little invisible to everyone except her best friend Rhiannon (Aly Michalka) and her freaking hysterically perfect parents (Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci, more on them later!). Olive doesn't want to go camping with Rhiannon's hippy family one weekend, so she invents a date with a college man instead. She doesn't actually have a date. Instead, she stays at home and sings "Pocket Full of Sunshine" all weekend. But when Monday morning rolls around, she tells Rhiannon she went on the date anyway. As she fabricates her fictitious weekend with an older gentleman, Rhiannon gets it into her head that she lost her virginity as well. Eventually, Olive plays along and she is overheard by the school religious freak MaryAnn (Amanda Bynes), who spreads the rumor around school that Olive is a slut. Suddenly, Olive is on the map. And she likes it! She begins to play along with her new slutty persona and is soon helping out her gay friend Brandon (Dan Byrd), pretending they had sex so people will stop tormenting him because he's gay. Brandon spreads word among the downtrodden school students that Olive will help them and soon she is the school slut. What at first seems like fun, soon turns into bad news for Olive who struggles with being ostracized and turned into an object by people who used to ignore her. Also, there happens to be a boy named Todd (Penn Badgley) who she is really into.
Typical high school comedy? Not at all! Maybe it's the hilariously fast paced, well written, super funny script. (And it is fast paced, except around the beginning of the third act where it drags a little bit). Or it could be all the excellent performances. Emma Stone is perfect. She's funny and endearing and effortlessly charming. She's genuinely likeable and someone who I would love to have as a friend in real life. She most certainly deserved that Golden Globe nomination. Clarkson and Tucci are amazing as her parents, and I would like for them to be married in real life. I would like for them to get divorced from whomever their current partners are, marry each other, and then adopt me. I can't possibly express in words how much I loved them as a couple in this movie. Thomas Haden Church also shows up as a super cool teacher, Lisa Kudrow as his slightly crazy guidance counselor wife, and Malcolm McDowell as a "fascist" principal.
All in all, Easy A is endlessly entertaining. A very funny, very enjoyable movie, and most definitely the best high school comedy that has come around in a long while.
Grade: B