Review: Easy A

Haven't teenagers got anything better to do? Gossip is a central preoccupation for the entire student body in Easy A, a new comedy / satire / social tut-tut film that works very well, despite its adherance to high school movie cliches. The 'teens' are all certainly in their 20s, the dialogue is impossibly too convenient, and everything wraps up very tidily. But that's ok, because the film operates at a high level within those confines, like Mean Girls did a few years ago (it even bests the Tina Fey-scripted film by omitting the 'let's show the audience all the subcultural divides by panning around the cafeteria').

Emma Stone plays Olive, who will discover by accident the film's main idea: don't have sex, but say you did. It's a simple lie, at first told to get her best friend off her back, but then later for a more compassionate reason. Olive lies a lot in this film - there is a healthy dose of both absolute lies and lies of omission, but as mentioned, we are quickly given a reason to get on her side. This is a big role for Stone, who has delivered before, really every time I can think of having seen her - this time she gets the spotlight to herself and squeezes all the juice out of it she can. There are times when Olive makes choices that we have trouble with, but Stone beckons us along and makes us care. Her performance leverages all the right stuff at all the right moments - and she gets vulnerability and strength across as not being mutually exclusive.

Everyone else here is pitch-perfect - well-cast and performing well, too. Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci are Olive's parents, who are loving, supportive, funny, and make it all the more believable that their daughter could be so clever. They are the kind of parents the real world should have more of. Thomas Haden Church and Lisa Kudrow are here to lend plausible evidence that teachers are people, too (something most high school kids seem to forget).

Easy A clips along nicely through its plot, aided greatly by consistent and well-devised wit. Though the beats are mostly predictable (escalation of the lie works out for a while, until it doesn't, then watch out), we enjoy seeing it all unravel because the script is witty and because the film is clear about its subject - this movie is not about sex, but more about how teenagers swirl around it, around the scandal and intrigue they believe it carries. I must not have a clue what California high schools are like, because I found myself surprised by the level of shock people have at a 17-year-old losing her virginity.

In keeping its message clear, the film avoids making too many implied comments about actual teenaged sexual escapades, and has a go at the judgmental nature of the high school crowd instead. John Hughes is very deliberately invoked, more than once, to great effect - Olive is sad that her life is not going the way of Pretty in Pink or Ferris Bueller's Day Off, except that then it kind of does. This movie and those are of course fiction - but their points are real - large groups of (young) people have a habit of isolating those different from them and ostrasizing them. That's not likely to change, ever, so the references to not only Hughes' films but also Nathaniel Hawthorne will stand the test of time.

The subtle message also carried through is that despite all the trouble it causes, sex isn't bad, but that it is a kind of connection between two people, and those (connections) can be all kinds of wonderful or terrible, so make your choices wisely. There is, I won't say an anti-religious message, but an indictment of the sort of people who use God to excuse their own opinions and judgments - that's always ok by me, especially in this case in which the character who mostly embodies that is given a chance for some depth along the way.

So, the trappings of high school films aside, if you can buy the permise that as the film opens, Emma Stone's character is unremarkable, then I highly recommend this.