Easy A

Truthfully, this trailer pretty much tells the whole story



Basically, Easy A is the story of a 17 year old girl, Olive, who's pressured into lying about losing her virginity by her best friend. Word gets out and she's branded a slut. Then being the kindhearted girl she is, she pretends to have slept with a bunch of losers and a homosexual to help "improve" their reputations at school.

As I mentioned, the trailer really gives it all away and given that, there's nothing unexpected that occurs in the film. But these days, more often than not, we don't watch teen movies, romances or comedies to see unexpected turns. Instead, we watch them to see how a familiar or predictable tale is told.

Olive, who's played by Emma Stone, is a pretty engaging character. I'm not familiar with Emma Stone's work but I'll say that she did a good job in this movie. Since Olive is not one of the "cool kids" or an outright loser, she's one of the "invisibles" in High School. But she's not the kind of girl who's depressed about it. Instead, she's the kind of sarcastic girl who finds humor in her situation. She also has some crazy parents whose main purpose in this movie is to spit out great one-liners.

In fact, this movie is filled with witty dialogue and that's what makes it interesting. We know that she would be okay with having the bad reputation till it stopped being fun and she'd have to tell the truth. We know that she'll have a love interest (played by Penn Badgley of Gossip Girl fame) and they'll end up together. But you make her a kind, smart, self deprecating character and him smart, mature and into her and it becomes an entertaining story.

And speaking of romance, I won't go as far as calling this a romantic comedy. There's some romance in it but they got away with not having to focus on it by making it a delayed romance - in other words, both characters already had feelings for each other prior to the start of the story. And they kept him in our consciousness by making them have very short conversations (like less than a minute) every now and then.

Like most teen movies that attempt to rise above the usual crap we're fed, there are themes of hypocrisy, groupthink, cliquism and eventually individualism.

All in all, I found it to be a fun, interesting movie. For those who like smart comedy and witty dialogue, Easy A is not a bad way to kill 90 minutes.