> Easy A
4 stars (out of 5)
Director: Will Gluck
Cast: Emma Stone, Alyson Michalka, Amanda Bynes, Thomas Haden Church, Patricia Clarkson, Stanley Tucci, Lisa Kudrow, Malcolm McDowell
Rating: (M)
For anyone assuming that Easy A is yet another high-school schlock flick for the social-networking generation, think again.
Leaning heavily on the quirky success of Juno, there is more than just a whiff of John Waters' warped genius and Alexander Payne's irreverence.
Director Will Gluck plays fast and loose with Bert V. Royal's original screenplay. Adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne's romance novel The Scarlet Letter, transposing an 1800s puritanical community on to a Californian high school, it works surprisingly well.
Stone's character, Olive Penderghast, is a smarter-than-your-average teenager who suddenly finds her anonymity blown apart through a school sex scandal. Sick of being taken to task about her benign social life, Olive flippantly summons up a fictitious boyfriend who she does it with. Stone superbly sells her harlot alter-ego through brilliant comic timing and witty repartee.
This is Stone's show, and with a host of brilliant bit-part players, from wickedly inappropriate parents to condescending Christians, Easy A effortlessly rolls out one amusing caricature after the other.
Director Will Gluck is well schooled in the canon of '80s high-school dramas and has tailored the script for laughs that might only come from an audience old enough to have seen The Breakfast Club when it was released.
Best thing: Emma Stone's assured performance and razor-sharp delivery.
Worst thing: Not finding more room for Thomas Haden Church or Malcolm McDowell.
See it with: Anyone who would dismiss all high-school dramas as puerile dross.
- Mark Orton
