Easy A Not Your Typical Teen Sex Romp

Rating: Null/10 (7 October 2010)

"I just thought of the funniest thing. My name is an anagram for 'I love.'" -- Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone)
I thought the idea for this movie sounded like one of the most preposterous ideas I've ever read and so almost didn't bother with it at all. After contriving a story that she lost her virginity to a (nonexistent) college boyfriend so she won't seem like a prude, high schooler Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) gets propositioned by a gay classmate to pretend to have sex with him so he can disguise his homosexuality from the hulking football team which has been hazing him. Their ploy is a success, Olive receives other propositions and, before she realizes it, has a reputation that she has neither earned nor deserves. I still think it's a stupid idea, which makes me all the more delighted at the result, which is a far better film than I would have suspected could come from the material.
Most of that's due to director Will Gluck's insistence on plausibility. After the initial "fake orgasm" while huddled classmates giggle outside a locked door at what they imagine must be happening (but isn't), Gluck spurns any reliance on physical comedy or silly situations. Funny things happen, but those things are all due to character and character development, not slapstick. And Gluck has in his arsenal not just a good cast but a great cast, a far better one than your typical teen sex romp boasts, including Thomas Hayden Church (All About Steve) as Olive's English teacher, currently expounding on Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter; Lisa Kudrow (forever associated with TV's Friends) as a counselor with a secret; Amanda Bynes (Hairspray) as a self-righteous uber-Christian out to save Olive's sinful soul; Cam Gigandet (Twilight) as Bynes' boyfriend who sings hymns with her, but harbors his own secret; and Patricia Clarkson (Shutter Island) and Stanley Tucci (Julie & Julia) as Olive's parents. Clarkson and Tucci can virtually do no wrong, and their glib delivery is so good that I'd love to see them together in another film. In fact, if there's any fanciful element in the film, it's that nobody's parents are that cool, but they're so amusing that I can live with it.
Too often in these things, secondary characters -- teachers, parents et al. -- are given the most cursory development and become props to facilitate getting us to the next lowbrow farcical scene, and rarely does a teen comedy seriously invite parallels with classwork in American literature. Yet here, with the exception of Malcolm McDowell (The Book of Eli) as a distant school principal, all the characters are justified beyond their strategic roles. They're people; they're not objects. Gluck even resists the temptation to make the indignant Bynes too much of a villain.
The real success is Stone's ability to carry the film as its star. She flawlessly understands her character, understands the story, and approaches it with a maturity sometimes lacking in actresses twice her age. I'm not completely comfortable with the film's resolution, which involves an impromptu musical number, but then I seldom am, simply because it's harder to resolve these complex questions than to set them up. Nevertheless, Easy A at least asks the questions, which many films fail to do.