Puritanical ostracism plays out in sunny southern California in Will Gluck’s Easy A. A smugly sassy modern rendering of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s A Scarlet Letter, it maintains the central thesis of skewering religious hypocrisy, but updates the tale by arming the pesky God botherers with contemporary weapons of mass character assassination: smart phones and Twitter accounts.
Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) tells a little white lie to embellish a boring weekend but gets caught out when her story escalates into an unthinking boast about a cherry-popping good time with a frat boy. Naturally this type of talk about a landmark rite of passage registers as a Very Big Deal, and when it’s overheard by the school’s bitchy Christian crusader (Amanda Bynes), the entire school goes all a-Twitter over the juicy 'details’ of Olive’s alleged deflowering. With the proverbial genie let out of the chastity belt, Olive finds it impossible to set the story straight and she becomes the target of scorn and slander, and unwanted attention from randy jocks.
In a stroke of good fortune, Olive seeks solace in her English texts, finding an empathetic ally within the pages of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s searing critique of priggish double-standards. Spying an opportunity for cutting social commentary, Olive adapts her wardrobe to complement her sullied reputation and fashions her own brand of contemporary whorsetry, with a red 'A’ emblazoned on her balconetted breast.
Cognisant of the playground’s rampant gender hypocrisy, Olive opts to 'pay it forward’ by offering up her tattered reputation for the betterment of the school’s disenfranchised; a gateway tryst with her gay best friend sets off a surge in demand for Olive’s fictional favours and their empowering afterglow. The lies compound into rumours of prostitution, until her house of cards of ill-repute topples in an attempted date rape in a family restaurant car park.
The action unfolds through a series of flashbacks that Olive narrates (and helpfully segments with chapter title cards) in a vlog post that goes viral in a bid to restore her reputation. As with all films that tap the zeitgeist and harness technology as a storytelling device, this technique is likely to date faster than you can say 'MySpace’, but it’s a neat way of tying up the story strands into a tidy ending that ticks all of the boxes of convention (never mind that its sharp U-turn from its source material makes its uplifting ending skirt dangerously close to the Demi Moore-headlining Hollywood adaptation that the script heretofore has taken great delight in lampooning).
Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci are idyllic caricatures of free-thinking liberal parents who trust their kids to think for themselves and who make every effort to demystify sex, race and swearing ('Spell it with your peas!" they implore her). Their articulate and good-natured ribbing over breakfast makes plain the point that with parents like these, Good Girl Olive is quite literally too cool for school. The breezy banter makes for some clever zingers but the cumulative effect of the 'happy family’ Penderghast vibe seems forced; Clarkson in particular, gets a few-too many of the indulgent 'isn’t she fun!’-type close-ups that are typically reserved for the smiley effervescence of late-career Diane Keaton (and Meryl-Streep-in-funny-mode).
In the contracted algebra of marketing speak, scribe Bert V. Royal has penned a script that references (both directly and indirectly) elements of Clueless, Mean Girls and the entire oeuvre of John Hughes. (In the case of the latter, the references to the maestro of teen film lore are transparent and fully credited.) No one’s really going to come off on top in that comparison, and so it is that Easy A mostly works as a zippy teen comedy but in the annals of cult teen film fandom it’ll probably rate more a Breezy B.
The film’s ultimately weak critique of cyber-bullying falls over in its lack of a serious villain as a counterweight to its headstrong heroine. Emma Stone deserved a lead role to call her own after showing early promise in supporting roles in Superbad and Zombieland and she’s an excellent choice as the wronged Olive. But where Hester Prynne has the fire and brimstone brigade to contend with, her Olive’s worst enemy is a prissy over-coiffed ringleader of a 'True Love Waits’-evolution-denying prayer group ('Jesus tells us to love everyone – even the whores and homosexuals – but it’s just so hard"). Bynes exaggerates the caricature beyond permissible comic proportions, and the bubble of believability pops completely in a woeful scene that calls for Olive to elicit empathy for her dippy tormentor.
Easy A falls well short of cult teen comedy status, but it's a fun if forgettable watch for a cross-generational audience: Teens should appreciate its safe-but-sassy critique of those who thrive on shoving their beliefs down other people’s throats; and their parents can draw comfort from its vigorous reinforcement of its heroine’s chastity... she’s quite content not to have anything shoved down her throat (or anywhere else) for quite some time yet, thank you very much.
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