At long last an intelligent teen comedy has decided to grace the theaters. Easy A may be the funniest teen comedy since Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. A sharp witted, intelligent dialogue is expertly delivered by a talented cast of actors through a finely tuned plot worthy of John Hughes himself.
The story follows Olive, played by Emma Stone, a sarcastic unpopular teenager trying to survive high school. In an effort to avoid camping with her best friend, played by Alyson Michalkam and her hippy family, she tells a tall tale of losing her virginity to a college freshman. The trouble starts when the schools resident Christian crusader, played by Amanda Bynes, overhears the tale and spreads the rumored virginity loss faster than a speeding text message.
Olive decides to embrace her newfound fake bad girl and stitches a red “A” on all her clothes, copying the adulterous from The Scarlet Letter.
Stone pulls off the sarcastic Olive to a tee, delivering one incredible line after another as she banters her way through the movie. The scene with Stone and Byrd jumping up and down moaning on a bed at a party while the entire school listens outside the door will go down in film history. No one can see the look on Byrd’s face when Stone punches him in the gut to simulate climax and not laugh hysterically.
Lisa Kudrow makes a cameo appearance as the school’s guidance councilor and adds one extra twist to Olive’s already complicated life. Kudrow’s performance from broken hearted to complete psychotic nightmare as she threatens Olive reminds us why we fell in love with her as Phoebe in Friends. Thomas Haden Church rounds off the cast as the favorite teacher, throwing out surprisingly witty and observant quips about the generation gap between him and his students.
Easy A is the rare comedy that creates humor without creating mind numbing stupidity and considers wit more than a string of loosely tied together references to current pop culture. The sexual humor and language is heavy, but nothing is gratuitously showed visually so the movie skirts under the PG-13. Definitely a must see for those who want a good laugh without shutting down large parts of their brains.
