Not many people will recall the book they had to read in English years past THE SCARLET LETTER. But you’ll remember it (or one of the versions you watched to pass class) when watching EASY A. In part because it references it often but also because of the affectionate twist it uses here mingling the Nathaniel Hawthorne classic with a bit of John Hughes infected use of the high school arena.
Emma Stone stars as Olive, a young girl easing her way through high school, never coming in on anyone’s radar and having a relatively easy time. That all changes with the little white lie she tells her best friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka). In an attempt to avoid spending the weekend with her new age family, Olive tells Rhia that she had a date with a college student.
But of course Rhia twists into not just a date but an entire weekend that ends with Olive’s loss of virginity to this fictional date. To make matters worse, Rhia drags this so called confession out of Olive in the girl’s rest room where Holy Roller Marianne (Amanda Bynes) was using a stall. In the age of texting and cell phones, the rumor travels at light speed and soon everyone believes Olive is the tramp of all tramps.
Things get even more complicated after Olive goes off on Marianne’s friend and ends up in detention. Fellow detentionee Brandon is constantly picked on because the school thinks he’s gay, which he is. He just would rather not deal with the bullying. Olive lets Brandon know how the rumor started without any factual basis and suggest he do the same, telling people he scored with some female student. Of course he convinces the good hearted Olive into pretending she was his conquest. A fake liaison behind closed doors at a party and the word spreads once more.
But this leads to more problems as Brandon tells various friends about the arrangement he had with Olive. Now more misfits come to her asking for the same favor paying with gift cards from various stores. The deeper Olive gets into the lie, the more Marianne seeks to remove her and her rumor inspired activities from the school. Not only that, Rhia turns her back on her friend when she takes center stage instead of her.
All of this escalates to a point where the notoriety soon becomes more than Olive can handle. Toss in the lies affecting her favorite teacher and the dream of one day becoming involved with the boy she’s had a crush on for years and you can see where this is going.
The solution Olive comes up with is original and inspired (as I said) by the many movies John Hughes made involving teens in trouble like SIXTEEN CANDLES and PRETTY IN PINK with a nice play on the film SAY ANYTHING. These movies all presented us with a world where every teen character had a problem that was solved by the end of the film. The same happens here. It’s the journey that makes it worth watching.
The movie is funny, touching and a nice look at the world of teen rumors, gossiping and hurtful ways. With any luck, teens watching the film will come away thinking twice about the things they say and text.
Emma Stone is marvelous here, offering that young girl quality so necessary to the character as well as the innocence of the things she sets in motion. Her smile lights up the screen when she has those moments where she gets to show the real character of Olive rather than the fake one she offers the students.
The movie offers plenty of laughs and some tender moments as well while taking swipes at those who would consider themselves above the rest and morally superior to everyone around them. In truth, everyone has a side they’d rather not let the rest of the world see. In the character of Olive, we get a glimpse of what could happen if you created a side that didn’t exist but others believed.
For me the true test of a movie is whether or not I think I’d watch it again. This movie may not be Oscar material but it will remain on my shelf. It was fun. It made me smile. And you’ll definitely have a good time watching it keeping in mind that it’s not Shakespeare but just a movie and a good one at that.
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