Sunday Matinée: Easy A

Easy A
Amazon | IMDb

Director: Will Gluck

Writer: Bert V. Royal

Stars: Emma Stone, Amanda Bynes and Penn Badgley

 

Favorite Quote: “Just once I want my life to be like an 80's movie, preferably one with a really awesome musical number for no apparent reason. But no, no, John Hughes did not direct my 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.

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Do you ever have those nights where no matter what; you just can’t seem to fall asleep? The other night I was having a case of insomnia but instead of watching HSN/QVC luckily I found this movie during my channel surf.

 

Now I had seen this movie before and my first impression was: typical teen movie. And after seeing it again, it’s still a teen movie but with slightly more class. But don’t let the “teen movie” label stop you! It made me laugh constantly throughout because of the dialog (“When you die, you will have to answer to a higher power.” “Tom Cruise?”).

 

The thing I love most about this movie is that it is narrated by Olive herself during a webcast. It is just something I am not used to seeing in movies and I thought it was a nice touch and brought parts of the movie together. Also the characters are freaking amazing. Olive (and her parents for that matter) is full of witty comebacks and one-liners. She is a girl after my own heart, making references to John Hughes movies and classic movies (even if it was to avoid reading the Scarlet Letter for English). Rhiannon is a sex crazed teen age girl (all talk no walk). The friendship between her and Olive reminds me so much a friendship I had in Jr. High. Marianne is one of those religious nuts who are more into her word than His word. Amanda Bynes does a great job of covering all the clichés. And together, these ladies make for quite an entertaining movie.

 

My Rating: 4 out of 5 checkers