Easy A

"If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances." Thus wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose "The Scarlet Letter" serves as an influence for Will Gluck's "Easy A," a film about a teenage girl who indeed has dreamed strange things and tried to make them look truthful with unending consequences.

Emma Stone is Olive, a sharp and witty yet fairly unknown high schooler with essentially one close friend and a bit hungry for a need of belongingness. Olive is generally well-liked, at least to those who know her. She spends one weekend listening and singing to bad music, and then uses her imagination to create a story of how she actually lost her virginity to a "gentleman." While Olive is generally well-liked, there is a group who does not like her, and that is a group of Christian students lead by Marianne (Amanda Bynes). Marianee's friend taunts Olive in class, and Olive retorts, resulting in her first trip to the principal's office.

She receives a detention and spends one afternoon cleaning the school with her fellow troublemaker Brandon (Dan Byrd), who is gay and harassed on a daily basis. Brandon painfully tells Olive that he has had enough with the bullying, and he wants her to extend the make-believe. He asks her to pretend to have sex with him. That way, everyone will know once and for all that he is indeed quite straight.

Anyway, requests like this continue. Students with desperate "needs" request her "service" and thus Olive is rewarded with gift cards, coupons, and attention. Her life begins to resemble the protagonist of "The Scarlet Letter," which is being read in class. The trajectory begins to spiral downward as things progress.

I haven't read "The Scarlet Letter" but I do know enough about it to understand the allegories. The condemnation the lead characters in these two stories is symbolic, to me at least, of the double-standard facing women. A male who engages in sexual activity and has numerous sleeping partners is considered a stud; a female in the same situation is a slut. I also can recall from my school days that the author of "The Scarlet Letter" was Nathaniel Hawthorne, the great-great-grandson of John Hathorne, a judge of the Salem Witch Trials and who is portrayed in Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" as being of the most vicious of the group. There is definitely a hint of that sentiment in "Easy A."

This film is much like "Mean Girls" and "Juno" before it, centering on female leads struggling with what Erikson would have described as identity versus role confusion. "Easy A" does not do enough to distinguish itself from the two, but it is quite funny. Like the two mentioned films, it becomes evident that actual people, whether they be teenagers or parents or teachers or Christian fundamentalists, do not in fact talk and act as they do in this film. But the farcical nature is forgiven, because these characters and the actors portraying them are very funny. The movie has an entertaining cast, with Thomas Hayden Church as Olive's favorite teacher, Lisa Kudrow as his wife who is also the school's guidance counselor, Malcolm MacDowell as the school's principal, Fred Armisen as a local preacher, and Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci as Olive's parents.

But the real gem of this production is Emma Stone. There is a perfect sense of sarcasm in her tone, a lack of intonation which is surprisingly effective and a slightly raspy voice mixed with her confidence in the risks she takes as a performer that make her really enjoyable to watch. It can be written with assurance that she will continue to entertain and her audiences will be quite fortunate.