In Review: Easy A

The Gist

Directed by a relatively unknown Will Gluck, Easy A surprisingly is as charming, witty, and funny as its main star Emma Stone.

The Good

• Great casting and script makes for a very atypical teen movie
• Charming Emma Stone really gets polished to shine here
• Properly edited and well-done screenplay

The Bad

• It's still a teen movie and it still has teen movie elements which may not appeal to older audiences
• Not much, save the picture quality; the movie is very grainy.

Synopsis

Forced to lie to escape a nudist camping weekend with her bestfriend Rhi and her parents, Olive Penderghast (Stone) created a lie that snowballed to her ending up being branded a highschool harlot. Olive narrates her descent and way out of this shoddy image.

Shiny Stone

I would like to state now that I am really partial to Emma Stone. First time I saw her in Superbad, I fell in love with her spot-on. And she pulls off another great performance in Easy A. I was actually pretty sad to see she's doing a teen movie like in the House Bunny, but when I got word that it was pretty good, I got faith back in Emma Stone. She's all at once funny and witty that you can't help but wish she would keep on speaking, she and her husky voice. She totally outshines every star here, even Stanley Tucci. And this is to say that the movie was well-cast with Emma Stone for starters. Stanley Tucci, Amanda Bynes, Penn Badgley, Lisa Kudrow, Thomas Hayden Church to name a few were there to give the movie's crown jewel enough polish to make sure she shines the whole time.

Not Another Teen Movie

Contrary to most teen movies of late that make very little sense and survives by slapstick, toilet humor, or overtly sexual themes, Easy A offers brain food by being witty. Based on "The Scarlet Letter," Easy A is dotted with interesting little background details that do not take away your entire attention from the main plot of the story. You could also commend that Stanley Tucci, as always, was charming like his on-screen daughter Emma Stone, yet he does not ask for all the attention. Lisa Kudrow's quirkiness also makes up for fun here and her selection for the role makes sense in the end. Amanda Bynes also worked well as the main antagonist of the story by being too righteous to be like-able.

I would also like to mention the editing and the screenplay. They were just well done and makes the story more engaging and quite unpredictable. Olive Penderghast sits in front of the computer and says she became a home-wrecker and you'd think she slept with her teacher, but the truth is far from that. The idea simply is to feed the audience an idea and throw a different loop that would end up in the promised result. The formula worked well for the movie and made it feel really smart.

My gripes? Not much really. Probably the grainy and poor picture quality. Just didn't do enough justice. I actually enjoyed this movie too much. Even the musical number by Emma Stone, I didn't mind. I in fact loved it and was a pretty good part of the movie. It's not entirely a movie that will make you question how you live your life, as I said, it's a teen movie, and probably the best since Mean Girls. If you take it the way you would take, say, Eat Pray Love or Julie & Julia, you are fooling yourself. This is a simple and charming story of a lie that got out of hand that someone needed to say the truth in the end. And isn't that what we all are looking for? The truth? And that hopefully no matter how much facades we put up, the ones we love always know and would love us for who we really are.

I give it a passing and recommended mark of 4.25/5.