Turning the tables a bit on teen rebellion by getting subversively judgmental about them instead, the matriculated satire Easy A, earns just that. Provocatively scrutinizing pubescent mating habits and heresies with nearly anthropological gusto even when borderline silly, the movie is likewise an easy award worthy followup to Juno, minus the baby bump.
Taking simulated sex to brand new places in a movie, Emma Stone shocks and amazes her nosy eavesdropping suburban California classmates in Easy A as Olive Penderghast, an insatiable self-promoting sex maniac reputed to excel as an erotic scream queen, and without ever removing a stitch of clothing. It seems that in high school these days, having a reputation for sleeping around even if a fake nymphomaniac, is much less of a stigma and source of teen torment, than sitting home weekends with no dates in sight.
So succumbing to peer pressure, while borrowing strangely from an English class lesson about Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter and puritanically persecuted protagonist Hester Prynne, Olive with her trash talking radically dirty mind, conversely finds herself to her surprise, the most popular coed on campus. While male students in need of a little help too in propping up their own outsider sagging reputations, solicit and even purchase from the enterprising imaginary seductress, make-believe trysts with her. Though a peeved pubescent posse of combo jealous virgins and religious right nuts, is determined to destroy Olive, if not cleanse her of her out-of-control libido sins.
This stylishly hilarious movie not into noticing much difference between a pretend hooker and a humanitarian, could very well be alternately called Ghosts Of Boyfriends Past, a title with a twist of another Emma Stone lusty satire. While Easy A goes to sextra-curricular extremes in goofing around about the obsessed Youtube generation’s red state/blue state turf wars even in high school, who knew.
Though props are especially earned here by some post-grad inventive collaborative adult minds, including director Will Gluck and devilishly eloquent playwright turned screenwriter, Bert V. Royal, who both excel at tapping into genuine teen angst. As well as Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson, upstaging just about everybody else with their off-campus antics, as Stone’s sexual revolution vets, too much information radically non-traditional parents.
Screen Gems
Rated PG-13
3 stars
