Easy A(+)

I was nervous about Easy A. The teen movie genre is plagued with one dimensional characters who are focused on fucking and/or getting themselves and others intoxicated so that they can accomplish the aforementioned fucking. It has declined since its glory days of the John Hughes dominated 1980s.

On behalf of my demographic, I cringe at this simplistic representation of adolescents. Although, I will cop to enjoying Superbad, which unabashedly celebrates the two above factors. I am going to further contradict myself and admit to incessantly quoting Mean Girls and Clueless ("boo you whore" and "that was way harsh", respectively). But, for every one of these enjoyable, albeit unrealistic, teen movies there are at least fifteen movies like The Virginity Hit or the long decayed and rotten American Pie series. These movies are unilaterally focused on inserting tab A into slot B. The other end of the genre is the overly sentimental and insipid Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Easy A dared me to hope for something beyond this. The trailer had some pretty good lines ("I always thought that pretending to lose my virginity would be a little more special. Judy Blume should have prepared me for that"). It was a different spin on the cherry popping that had the potential to be interesting. Easy A also had Emma Stone as its lead. I have a firm girl-crush on Emma Stone: who managed to make her character in Superbad somewhat interesting despite limited material and rocked the hell out Zombieland. I was afraid to get too excited as I walked into the theater.

I was very impressed with how the movie handled cliques and relationship dynamics in high school. Instead of defined and cliques that are segregated in the lunch room, the students are a singular, shapeless body. Everyone is far too concerned with themselves and how they are presented to bother aligning themselves with a firm group. This is a much more accurate representation of 21st Century high school. A world where you have 500 Facebook friends.

The story kicks off with a little white lie. Olive Penderghast (Stone) lies to get out of a camping trip with her friend, Rhiannon, and says that she is going on a date. This lie soon gets bigger and bigger. Soon, the entire school, thinks that Olive lost her virginity to a college guy (who, remember, is nonexistent). One thing leads to another and Olive's gay friend, Brandon, asks her to do him a solid. He asks if she can pretend that he slept with her in order to stop his constant harassment. Olive agrees and she eventually does this for many maligned boys, in exchange for gift cards and money.

The school's Conservative Christian coalition harass and alienate Olive, who in response, starts wearing a scarlet A on her newly purchased slutty clothes. This ties to The Scarlet Letter, which Easy A borrows from. Her reputation corrodes and we watch as Olive tries to pull herself out this mess she created.

Perhaps, the greatest thing about Easy A is that it delineates from the teen movie formula in one wonderful way. Olive relies on herself to get out of her mess. She does not call upon her fiercely loyal friends (she has none), there is no big speech at the end about morals and what the good things in life are, and Olive doesn't fall over another guy. There is a love interest (Penn Badgley), but he doesn't figure into the plot that much except to serve as a foil for the puritanical student body.

All Olive does is simply explains her side of the story to the entire student body via webcam broadcast. This is what makes Easy A great. Although John Hughes helped define teen movies, this is no John Hughes movie. It moves cinematic teens into the 21st Century, Olive gives hope that teens are greater and smarter than they often get credit for.