Easy A Reviews

Despite its average, many-times-seen-before plot line(s), I really enjoyed this movie. It reminded me of watching 80's movies most of the time, it was cute and funny. Not overly special or fantastic, but definitely time well spent. I loved Emma Stone, and while I didn't quite buy Amanda Bynes as a high school student in this (and her acting was kind of terrible compared to the others in the film), the cast was decent.

It's a movie good for some laughs, though I am not sure I would buy that any of the actors were high school students, probably because they have been seen playing college students elsewhere. I enjoyed this enough to keep it around at least long enough to watch it again down the road.

I really adore Emma Stone, her performance was very good like the previous movies she did as well and made me laugh so much, as Amanda Bynes doing the "religion girl". The message that the movie passes isn't very original, but keeps being really cool, even more in a society with many teenagers that appreciate characteristics which Olive (from the movie) tries transmit (even lying). It's really incredible what people do for popularity. Easy A is a great teen comedy, up there with films like Mean Girls and Superbad. It has a witty screenplay, some great dialogue, and remains hilarious throughout. It has a great acts as well. Emma stone had recently charmed me in Zombieland and Superbad, and here she shows that she is a great lead. She can really act, giving a performance that is the biggest reason to watch this film. She is perhaps the best young star right now of her age. The rest of the cast is amazing as well. Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson are hilarious as her off-beat parents, and Lisa Kudrow is great as well in her limited performance. All in all, there is no reason to miss this film. It is rewatchable, entertaining, funny, and best of all, intelligent. Have I mentioned how great Stone is here?

I thought this would be really dumb, but it turned about to be not so bad. It actually had some really funny parts. Emma Stone was alright maybe I'll be impressed in her new movie "Help", she will impress me if she is good in a drama. Thomas Haden Church was hilarious and so were Emma Stone's parents in this. The story was OK nothing hugely amazing or great, but it was a funny movie defiantly

Quite different from other teen movies. I thought it was funny and engaging. Emma Stone was spectacular as Olive!

9/10

So, what instantly came to mind about Easy A? Well, let's think: it just looked another teen comedy about teenagers going through sexual phases such as puberty, sexual identity or orientation or even sex itself and it really didn't look any different from any film that we have seen in the past so it isn't that much of a triumph but it isn't a disappointment either. It is actually one of those teen-based films that I would call neither a comedy nor a drama because I couldn't even bring myself to laugh out loud barely at all. Where I think Easy A tries and almost completely fails the most is that I think it tries to show that there is something Juno-like about it with a troubled teenage girl in a phase and has an involvement with a geek but what Easy A lacked was heart and some drama in it. It had a message but didn't really express it every well was that whether someone loses their virginity or not, it is not really anybody's business because (like the message in American Pie) sex isn't that important and that there are more important things in life.


High school student Olive Penderghast finds herself the victim of her school's "rumor mill" when she lies to her best friend Rhiannon 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 gets her expelled and she loses a shot at attaining her own happiness.


Emma Stone really is becoming one of the great young actresses of this generation after her roles in Zombieland, Superbad (even though I didn't like the latter film very much) and the upcoming Spider-Man reboot The Amazing Spider-Man and Easy A is another great role of hers! It was her performance as Olive that was easily the best quality that the film had overall and she rightfully deserved her Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress Musical/Comedy. Anyway, in many ways girls like Olive are incredibly annoying who brag about having sex whether lying about it or telling the truth but only one thing she said made the entire school think different about who she really is. About that, the second message is that not everybody can be trusted and even one revelation, whether it's a lie or the truth, can affect a friendship, a relationship or anything like that. She is a very likable character because she is, lets face it, a woman who some men want her to be (well, apart from the fact she lies about losing her virginity). Unfortunately, we didn't see all that much of the other characters because the entire film was pretty much all-Olive but of what we saw, it was at least satisfying with some decent performances.


Will Gluck, a guy who is beginning his career as a film director and seems to be going for teen comedies seeing as he previously made Fired Up! before Easy A. I've not seen that one but that doesn't look anywhere near as good as this one even though Easy A wasn't that good. I guess where I think some might not like this one is that it has its very basic and easy dialogue and not many differences from other teen comedies but it does have a good script and a good message to all teens so that makes it good enough to enjoy.


Overall, Easy A is a decent teen comedy that I did enjoy but didn't love. If you love American Pie, Superbad and perhaps Knocked Up as well, you will really like this one! It is just a bit of fun that does deliver despite a few flaws that it has.

After Olive Pendergast (Emma Stone) tells her best friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka) that she cannot go camping with her family because she has a date rumours begins to spread. Olive becomes known as the school skank and is approached by guys to have sex with them. Olive comes up with a plan where she fake has sex with guys for payment. But soon the rumours become more and more vicious and Olive becomes hated by many in the school. She tries to find a way to figure everything out before she loses everything, including her education.

Easy A is one of the best comedies to be released in quite a long time. There is a unique feel to it. Emma Stone helps make this movie believable and fresh. Her down to earth charm plays a huge factor in the success of this film. Emma is one of the premiere leading ladies in Hollywood. She has the potential to star in comedy and dramas or do a brilliant mixture of both. Emma is accompanied by some surprisingly good performances in this film. Amanda Bynes is beyond hilarious playing an ultra religious girl who boycotts Olive after the rumours spread. Alyson Michalka plays Olives jealous best friend Rhiannon. Penn Badgely plays Todd, a guy who Olive has known forever, and sees past her little game. This cast does such a wonderful job of being exactly what they are, young and enthusiastic.

The elements of Easy A that make it an attractive film is the cast, the plot and the social commentary. A very good balance of saying what has already been stated many times in a new and refreshing way. Easy A finds the balance between cracking a joke about what is relevant in today’s society and flat out telling us something it feels is wrong. It makes a comment about people judging others by making it seem a little over the top. The thing about Easy A is that is all a big joke until people start to get hurt by what is happening, and that is when this movie transcends the barrier from being just another teenage sex comedy to a full fledged mature adult film. Easy A takes the necessary steps to be liked by many, but it also takes the steps to be noticed by many who would just simply disregard it as just another raunchy comedy.

Easy A is one of the better films I decided not to pass up in recent months. I liked the happy-go-lucky beginning the wonderful flow and pacing it has through out the middle. Most of all it had such an interesting conclusion, where the jokes and the light heartedness of what really is a touchy subject took a backseat and the realization of how many people were now intertwined in this web of lies took the forefront. Easy A deals with many issues that young teens face and for the most part handles them well, but took it that extra step to make sure we fully understood the intentions.

Easy A really is one of the best teenage years set movies since the John Hughes era of films. It makes a reference to Hughes when Olive mentions her life is not a John Hughes film. For this film the references to pop culture really serves a major purpose. There had to be a decent level of pop culture references because this film is a modern take on the Scarlett Letter. They tied that aspect in very nicely. The filmmakers took into account that many people may not know of the Scarlett Letter and so they made it so Olive’s class was studying it in the movie. This idea helped the audience get a general understanding of what the Scarlett Letter was about, while still making the modern jokes about pop culture.


Easy A is an Easy film to buy into, there are a lot of really funny jokes, a lot of over the top antics involving teenagers and a few dramatic bits that help sum up how hard growing up can be. In the end Easy A is a film I really enjoyed because it went where it should have. Easy A is a film worth watching. Emma Stone and the rest of her cast mates deliver such wonderful performances that it helps make the film so much more engaging. Easy A has further made me a fan of Emma Stone, and has made me a fan of Amanda Bynes. Don’t pass up Easy A, watch it and enjoy it.

During its first few minutes EASY A makes it a point to inform you that it's "not just another high school comedy," and the way the film immediately starts aiming its satirical arrows at the cliches and stereotypes of that genre means that it's a promise we can actually believe. While EASY A may not be entirely unconventional, it's undoubtedly fresh and entertaining, and it gets even better when you add Emma Stone's infectious, spunky persona to the mix. In the same vein as MEAN GIRLS, this film takes aim at the social pressures of high school to give us a plot that may seem outlandish when evaluated as a whole, yet one suspects that there are plenty of situations that will be relatable to anyone who is or has been in that dreaded place called high school.

I thought I was watching myself during the first few scenes of EASY A, as the protagonist, Olive (Emma Stone), confesses to us that she prefers chilling out at home during her weekends rather than going out, partying, going crazy, etc. It's the type of thing people think of as "boring" and criticize you for it in high school, but well, I've been out of high school for six years now, so I no longer care much about that. The same can't be said for Olive, though. She gets pressured so much by her friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka) to go camping for the weekend that Olive is forced to tell Rhiannon what she initially thinks is a perfectly harmless white lie: that she's spending the weekend with a guy. After the weekend, facing even more pressure from Rhiannon, Olive says she lost her virginity to said guy. Word of mouth spreads, and suddenly Olive is the resident Paris Hilton of her high school, being gossiped about by everyone. Rather than wallowing in fear, she actually takes advantage of the situation in more ways than one, eventually even making money out of her celebrity status. Of course, as you'll expect, some things go wrong and Olive goes from super popular to super notorious, and as a character says later in the film, "notoriety doesn't really benefit the noted; it only benefits the notees." People love gossip not because they really CARE about the person they're blabbering about, but because they love to tell outrageous stories to others. It makes them feel important. They feed off of it.

Like many high school comedies, EASY A is based on a work of literature (in this case, Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"), but because this movie is as good as it is, it doesn't shy away from referencing its source material, constantly recognizing where and how it draws from it. EASY A doesn't treat us like we're a dumb audience, which cannot be said of most other films of its ilk. Its blatant jab at the Demi Moore film version of Hawthorne's novel is hilarious. EASY A is a smart, knowing work of cinema (the line about "Disneyworld going blue in the last election" is brilliant, and its quick, subtle reference to GOSSIP GIRL and THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS is timed perfectly). First kisses often happen in middle school, and they're generally devoid of the magic that people want for their first kiss, and there are often a lot of nerves involved. In a well-inserted flashback, EASY A takes us to a "sort-of first kiss in middle school" in a scene that is played surprisingly accurately.

If the focus had stayed on Olive's ventures into the dark side of high school popularity, EASY A may have easily been brilliant. The problem comes with a few of the subplots that are worked into the film. Marianne (Amanda Bynes) plays the requisite overzealous Catholic girl who wants to "save" Olive, and while Amanda Bynes is a wonderful comedic actress (it's really a shame that she announced her retirement from acting), she's saddled by a 100% cliched cardboard character that borders on cartoonish (it's not a problem with the performance - it's with the way the character was written). Similarly, the film features the requisite love interest, Todd (Penn Badgley), and of course, he's the only person who "doesn't believe" any of the rumors said about Olive and who wants to simply like her for who she is. We've seen this too many times before. Finally, there's a very awkward plot line that becomes more important than it should have, and it involves the school's guidance counselor having an affair with one of the students (of course, the student is a 22-year-old who has been held back a few grades, since we wouldn't want anything too dirty/illegal to happen here now, would we?).

Still, Emma Stone's charm ultimately carries the film and tips the scale in its favor for a recommendation. After seeing her supporting roles in SUPERBAD and ZOMBIELAND, I was particularly excited about this movie because her performances in those two films were incredibly natural (not a single false note) and she accomplishes the same in EASY A. The film is obviously a star vehicle for Stone, but we never feel like she's being jammed down our throats. She's giving an authentic performance and it seems like it's important for her to do so. Patricia Clarkson gives a delightful performance as Olive's mother, at times delivering some magnificently acerbic lines (most notably when she talks about her experiences during her own high school days).

While I can't give EASY A its titular grade, there's no doubt that it's a solid B, with its sharply observant script and good sense of humor.