You’ve seen ‘Easy A’ before. You’ve seen it when it was called ‘American Pie’, you’ve seen it when it was called ‘Juno’, you’ve seen it when it was called ‘Mean Girls’. In fact you may have read it when it was called ‘The Scarlet Letter’. Hell, if you have seen a John Hughes movie: you’ve seen this movie.
‘Easy A’ is an extremely derivative movie for sure, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fully enjoyable.
‘Easy A’ is a re-imagining of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel; ‘The Scarlet Letter’ . Writer Bert Royal and director Will Gluck (Fired Up) make no qualms in letting you know they ripped it off.
Like ‘The Scarlet Letter’, the story follows the public ordeal of a young woman after she is exposed to be sleeping around. In the case of Olive (Emma Stone), her ordeal is caused by pretending to be a whore for popularity reasons. After lying about her sexual prowess to her best friend Rhiannon (Ally Michalka) the rumor mill begins; and Olive gains a reputation.
What begins as an exercise in white-lying; blows up to a full blown performance, complete with slutty clothing and a little scarlet ‘A’ pinned to her clothing.
Her Parents (Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson) are too relaxed to care. Her Principal (Malcolm McDowell) and teachers (Thomas Haden Church and Lisa Kudrow) attempt to understand her problems whilst dealing with their own. Amanda Bynes plays Marianne; a Religious fanatic in Olive’s school, who spreads the rumors the worst. Suddenly, things get too much for Olive to juggle, and she has to right her wrongs, blah, blah , blah. You know the type of movie this is.
Like ‘Mean Girls’ the casting automatically works against the movie. Like Lindsay Lohan was (Back then) it is very difficult to believe Emma Stone as an unpopular and sexually awkward teen who can’t get a boyfriend. Whilst Stone is brilliant in the movie, it could have worked much better otherwise; say if a Tina Fey type was cast. I also could not buy Amanda Bynes as a Religious nut even though I thought she was also great in the movie. Ultimately casting isn’t that big of an issue with the flick; because both actresses’ pull it off.
Thomas Haden Church, Lisa Kudrow, and Ally Michalka do the job, but they aren’t particularly memorable. Malcolm McDowell’s appearances’ are just head scratching – what is he doing in this? For me the true stars of the movie are Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olives’ parents, and they are brilliant. They seem to be having a lot of fun, and they appear to be improvising. Those characters were very enjoyable and memorable.
I actually spent a lot of the movie just waiting for those two to come back on screen, they were the only organically funny parts of the whole movie. There are jokes all throughout ‘Easy A’; but director Will Gluck (Fired Up) mangles the timing, or he takes a joke that works and rams it into the ground through repetition. Many of the jokes are low brow, but they work in that Adam Sandler sense: if you let go for a minute you can laugh…you’ll just feel dirty afterwards. The comedy in the movie takes a backseat…an argument could be made that this movie isn’t really a comedy anyway.
Its more of a lecture. A lecture on the perils of lying etc. There is one thing that rarely works well in a movie; and that is voiceover. For most films’ voice-over is just overbearing and does nothing but describe what occurs visually on screen. It’s one of my pet hates, and I believe it has the ability to tank an entire film.
It tanks ‘Easy A’.
The entire movie is a massive lecture.
It opens on Olive talking directly to the audience through web cam, telling us the story; and the film constantly cuts back to her. It is trying to be an homage to John Hughes (there is even a five minute monologue over a montage of Hughes’ films to let you know this), this is in particular an homage to ‘Ferris Buellers Day Off’, but it doesn’t work…because in ‘Ferris Bueller’; you weren’t just hearing Ferris in your ear every ten minutes, when he spoke to you, it was for a purpose.
In ‘Easy A’ it just comes across as lazy and condescending. Let me elaborate on this: you see, Olive doesn’t just address us; she shows us historical footage, diagrams, pictures and we constantly get shown scene-cards that she has made of cardboard… If there is anything worse than voice over telling you what you are watching, it is voiceover telling you what you are about to see. For example, If I said to you ‘Easy A will have an end’. A) You know that the movie will have an end so why did you tell me? And B) You now have to wait an hour and a half for the end to happen. That’s what the entire movie is like, At ten minute intervals Olive will say “And now is the bit where I ruined a marriage” show you a title card that says “how I ruined a marriage” and then you have to spend the next 20 minutes anticipating it, whilst she talks you through it.
All of the voice-over (and there was a lot of it) was unnecessary, and made the movie a chore. The entire opening 20 minutes, is a monologue by Olive. All of it just screams laziness, especially when you consider how derivative the whole film is. There are gross out scenes like in ‘American Pie’ (Speaking of ‘American Pie’ there is even a sexually promiscuous mother giving advice – In ‘American Pie’ this was the same except it was the father). Characters talk like ‘Juno’, in the ‘too smart to be realistic’ kind of dialogue, and it fills this movie.
The whole thing just feels stagey. Characters say their ‘smart dialogue’ to each other on a picturesque hill. Its things like this that inorganically exist in the movie for no other reason then to make the boring proceedings somewhat interesting. There is even a shoe-horned love romance. It seems entertaining whilst it occurs, but like an episode of ‘Family Guy’ its enjoyable as it passes, but once it is over you can’t remember it at all. It was all inorganic jokes and references and had no substance whatsoever. Now ‘Easy A’ isn’t exactly an episode of ‘Family Guy’ but you get my point.
The soundtrack choices in the film are so painfully obvious and infuriating. If you haven’t heard Joan Jett’s ‘Bad Reputation’ used over a montage scene then you might like this movie. They even use ‘Don’t cha’ by Busta Rhymes. There is a ‘Death Cab for Cutie’ song and of course they had to put in ‘Don’t you forget about me’ (in a ‘Breakfast Club’ homage). I could go on about this films flaws; like its misogynistic and anti-religious overtones, to it’s 20 endings, to its predictability, but I feel it won’t be worth it.
‘Easy A’ is the usual teen comedy. It’s derivative and a chore in parts…but it moves quickly enough, and as low brow as it is; there is still fun to be had. You can enjoy the cast, and the poppy images – just don’t expect anything substantial. It’s an audience movie and it doesn’t really have pretensions about that. It could have been worse, but it also could have been better.
With ‘Easy A’, you’ve seen it all before, so you don’t even need to see the movie to know if it’s for you or not.
5 out of 10.
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