Okay, but ultimately souless

Rating: 5/10 (25 September 2010)

Saw Easy A tonight. It's pretty average. It's a film that had multiple references to classic 80's Brat Pack flicks, and so that raises it above the standard teen movies. Older audiences will get the 80s references more than the younger ones. There's quite a few laughs to be had, and some snappy dialogue. The basic idea of the film is good (a re-working of The Scarlett Letter, which the film unashamedly references and possibly over-references).
However, the main problems are ultimately fundamental flaws in the script. Olive (the smoking hot Emma Stone) is too cool. She's too self- assured, and too smart. It doesn't have the authenticity of teen life, unlike Mean Girls which had it in spades. Olive wasn't the cynical outsider the role called for; she was the confident adult narrator. Films that portray the hero coming out stronger at the end work for a reason, but the character was the same throughout.
The end of the film is a love story and fixes everything in only a few scenes, but it's tacked on, and felt contrived. The core of the film is the 'Scarlett Letter' concept, and it's a clever concept, but it kind of got muddled anywhere outside that. Olive's character didn't really suffer any great despair (at least the drew any empathy), so the ending (where she miraculously found love in about 5 minutes) was more a marriage of convenience than one of passion.
Overall, it was a strong film. Very confident, witty and well-paced. At the end though, it was just souless. No real losses or triumphs, no character development. Olive was just as smart and self-confident at the beginning as she was at the end. The audience didn't cheer Olive through the rough times because there weren't any that felt rough. We didn't really care that she hooked up with a decent guy at the end, as that subplot was woefully malnourished and not given any real development time.
Commercially? Okay. Artistically? Disappointing. It could have been the next Clueless or Mean Girls, but kind of wasted it's potential.
Worth seeing if there'e not much else on, and definitely worth seeing for Emma Stone in tiny blue shorts.