Thanks for checking out our Easy A Review
Genre: Comedy
Directed by:
Staring: Emma Stone, Penn Badgley, Amanda Bynes, Dan Byrd, Thomas Haden Church, Patricia Clarkson, Lisa Kudrow, Malcolm McDowell, Aly Michalka, Stanley Tucci
Released: Sept 17, 2010
THE GENERAL IDEA
High school student Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) finds herself the victim of her school’s “rumor mill” when she lies to her best friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka) about a weekend tryst with a fictional college freshman. Word quickly spreads of Olive’s promiscuity and, much to her surprise, she welcomes the attention. When she agrees to help out a bullied friend by pretending to sleep with him, her image rapidly degrades to a more lascivious state and her world begins to spin out of control. As she helps more and more of her classmates and her lies continue to escalate, Olive must find a way to save face before the school’s religious fanatic Marianne (Amanda Bynes) gets her expelled and she loses a shot at attaining her own happiness.
THE GOOD
Olive’s dialogue is just awesome. She delivers these well thought out and clever words like she meant them. And Emma Stone is just infectious on screen. She is as charming and as attractive as you might expect. And while the trailer makes it look liker her character is clueless about the mess she is making, she is very much the captain of that ship and Stone deals with the slowly increasing stress her “plan” is getting her.
Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as the parents are literally the coolest parents ever. Witty and charming but not dismissive of their parental duties. Every moment these two are on the screen alone or apart is just amazing. Their chemstry works with everyone they are on screen with and they steal the scene without stealing the whole show.
There is a LOT of humour in this film and a lot of fun to be had. Yes, when Stone goes wild, its droolworthy, but there is more to this film than that. There is a lesson in here, and more than the life of one meaningless cute teenager in the balance.
THE BAD
The pacing of this movie is horrible. We know what its about, but it takes a long time to get to it. This would be fine if the build up was worth it, but they spend far too long on the build up that you spend the first half of the film looking at what you already saw in the trailers with not a lot more in there.
Amanda Bynes announced her retirement after she did this movie and after twitter bitched her out for the move she has resolved to do more films. Which is a good thing for her as I would hate for this role to be her last. She’s lost some charm and certainly gained some weight, but her holy roller character in this was just not likeable even for the antagonist of the film. Bynes is a guilty pleasure for me, but in this she was just painful.
Lisa Kudrow needs to retire. She will never top her role as Phoebe on Friends, and she was just terrible in this too. Fortunately she’s a spacefiller and while part of the plot, she’s more collatoral damage and really doesn’t have that much screen time. You dont care about her at all.
OVERALL
Fun and charming, and does offer more than the trailers give you, but I was expecting more. Add in some supporting cast that I had hoped would do better and it still stands as a good fun film that I did enjoy, but not as much as I wanted to.
Emma Stone makes everything better.
I give Easy A a 6 out of 10
Lisa Kudrow is awesome, whether or not she was right for this film. If you haven’t seen The Comeback Kid, you should really check it out. Sometimes it makes you want to cringe (she’s just such a pitiful character), but even then, a part of you is laughing. In terms of comedic acting chops… watch some of that and tell me she’s not one of the best.
My wife wants to go see this in theaters but it sounds like a rental to me.
I think giving this movie a 6 out of 10 is quite generous. Emma Stone went the Dawson’s Creek route with her dialogue which fit her intelligent persona at times but often made her choice of words look awkward. I feel this movie tried to take themes from various movies but didn’t explore the themes enough to grasp the audiences’ attention. It tried to take from Saved with Amanda Bynes’ character and her friends but failed as you said, followed Mean Girls with Emma Stone’s character, and I wasn’t suprised at all when they mentioned Patrick Dempsey’s “Can’t Buy Me Love” with the plot basically being a modern day rip off. Emma Stone’s character is almost what Bella’s character is from Twilight…a shell for young girls. I would give this movie a 3 out of 10 for cramming a bunch of movie plots and themes together and not spending the time to explore just one.
-Ryan
I felt the same (maybe I wouldn’t say she needs to retire) about Lisa Kudrow. She was super tacked on and I couldn’t even understand who or what her character was really meant to be.
Emma Stone was great in this.