Film Review | Easy A

No matter how many films and TV shows we consume, the oft-advertised foibles of American high schools – melodramatic gender politics, casual social cruelty meted out by puzzlingly well-defined tribal packs – will remain, on any level apart from the most superficial, a mystery to any of us who have suffered through (or were we saved?) the secondary school system here.

Because, apart from those lucky enough to have gone to the couple of co-ed schools, how could we ever possibly match up to the high-drama of the US teenage epics that have since become legend.

In Will Gluck’s Easy A, our heroine Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) bemoans a time when men were far more chivalrous – the 80s. Her reference points, however, all come from John Hughes films: iconic imagesof John Cusak or Emilio Estevez play with nostalgic VHS graniness as she moans about the lack of romance in her life.

Which just goes to show how reality shouldn’t really be the concern here.

And it is not only the 80s brat pack canon that gets name-checked (and incorporated) here; much like 10 Things I Hate About You, Gluck’s film takes a literary source (in this case Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic The Scarlet Letter) and updates it – freely and with tongue firmly in cheek – into a high school setting, retaining its core themes for effect, and peppering gleeful little references throughout.

And like 10 Things I Hate About You, it keeps up the game with a steady charade of genuine wit, with a premise to match.
We’re all familiar with Olive’s predicament: pretty but unassuming, and virtually invisible to the elite of her Califronian high school, she bears her burden with little complaint and a quirky spring in her step, and is kept in social check by her popular (and generously endowed) friend Rhiannon (Aly Michalka).

But when Olive concocts an fictional weekend tryst with a boy named George to avoid weekend camping her Rhiannon’s hippie-nudist parents, it just so happens that she is overheard by motor-mouth gossip Jesus freak Marianne (Amanda Bynes) and the high school rumour mill – as it is wont to do – begins to spread like wildfire.

But instead of assiduously trying to deny her newly-tarnished reputation, Olive enjoys the sudden surge in notoriety and makes a go at trying to beat the popular kids at their own game. Playing up her role as the new uber-tart on the block, she whips the entire school into a frenzy, even soliciting her (fictional) services to lift many a loser’s reputation out of murky waters, starting with her gay friend Brandon (Dan Byrd), who is consistently bullied due to his sexuality.

But as the lies pile up, Olive finds it harder to keep up with her promiscuous alter ego, and when the reputation of her classmates (and even teachers) becomes jeopardised, she is forced to take a dramatic U-turn to the truth.

While it’s a broth stuffed to the brim with ingredients (add Juno to the above list of influences), a genuine spunk – largely carried off by the superlative Stone – lends Easy A a breezy, memorable energy.

The all-round great supporting cast helps too. Olive’s ‘progressive’ parents – Rosemary (Patricia Clarkson) and Dill (Stanley Tucci) – are just adorable, and effortlessly reel off zingers in every scene they’re in (“So where are you from, originally?” asks Dill to their adopted African-American son, who doesn’t miss a beat on the joke a chuckles with joyful resignation). Thomas Haden Church is also wonderfully self-effacing as Olive’s favourite English teacher, who introduces the class to The Scarlet Letter and becomes an unwitting mentor to Olive during her sudden transformation; he is indirectly helped by his wife Mrs Giffith (Lisa Kudrow, who is finally funny) in this.

But the fact remains that Stone is not only in every scene (the exceptions are too few to consider); she is also narrating the entire thing through the framing device of a video blog, so she remains crucial to the entire process. The fact that she carries it off with such gusto, making the entire film effortless, makes her, as an individual, more impressive than the project as a whole. The film borrows from Juno, but Stone has managed to achieve the same effect with a highly competent script that is, however, no match for Diablo Cody’s idiosyncratic tone.

The high school comedy is part lampooned, part paid tribute to here… by the filmmakers themselves as much as Olive. It’s just as comforting and consoling as all the rest, but the fantasy is given just enough edges for us all to enjoy.

Particularly those of us who’ve never been in the American system, and can enjoy the lie as comfortably as all the others.