Olive (Emma Stone) is a smart, funny and independent girl who is hardly noticed by her peers and whenever she is often ridiculed by them, but most harshly by the queen bee Marianne (Amanda Bynes). To make herself seem more respected she uses her greatest talent to make herself the most popular girl in school; lying. At a weekend party Olive reluctantly agrees to pretend to have sex with a gay guy (Dan Bryd) so homophobic bullies will stop tormenting him in exchange for payment. Olive soon turns into what I call a “plastic prostitute” as more boys pay her to pretend to have sex with her and Olive starts turning into the subject of the book she is reading for English class “The scarlet letter”, causing her to question herself.
This was a very good teen comedy and coming from someone who is in the middle of their college education you can tell Im not lying especially since I get a little drowsy watching teen comedies. It's a little hard for me to say what I liked about this movie but I could say that most of the acting in this movie ranges from average to good. Emma Stones role in the film is mostly static through it as her personality doesn't change that much, but her decisions and motives do start to change to about middle of the film when she begins to show reluctance for what she is doing. There is one scene in this movie where she completely opens up to the audience about her problems that i thought was just terrific and (you will all think Im insane) but for that scene along with her daily pod casts I think she deserves a nomination for best actress.
Another performance I liked was by Thomas Haden Church as Olives english teacher. What I really liked about him was that he reminded me a bit of my old politics teacher in high school and my Tv production teacher in college right now. What makes him good is that he's very convincing as that one teacher you had in school that looks like you hate him on the outside but on the inside you think he is the greatest teacher of all time since he is very straight forward with his performance and he doesn't drag the movie on or bore you to death. A performance I didn't like was by Amanda Bynes as Marianne because as good of an actress she is, I really haven't seen her go all the way outside of her box by having a more mature/adult role. I thought making her an antagonist was a good leap for her career but I think Hollywood is still treating her like a child and because she is so loveable and childish you don't want to see her take on a more serious role.
A few months ago I said in my review of Avatar that was like Pocahontas (1995), well in a very weird way Easy A is like Avatar. Both films do deal a great amount of their time to acceptance and being able to blend in as one of the cool blue kids. But like Avatar both films go on a downward spiral to their climaxes and enter either a state of rejection and hatred from the religious authority which in both cases are the political authorities of their cultural body. I also thought the video logs/blogs had some similarities since they both deal with one spilling out and discussing things they either wanna keep to themselves or just wanna blurt out to the world wide web.So you can see that apart from effects and budget both films deal a great amount of their time to acceptance and rejection.
As mentioned in the plot summary this film is partially based on the scarlet letter. In the Scarlet Letter a woman is found guilty of the crime of adultery at a time when the church had a great influence. As such she is forced to wear a large red A on her clothing to identify herself as such. In Easy A, the plot is modernized to deal with the additional themes of peer pressure but like the Scarlet Letter does deal with religious pressures. I think the major theme of both stories is Pressure and the ability to control it when you need to. When a person lies it runs fast and the pressure of it can easily change one's personality and as illustrated in the oscar worthy scene makes you different.
This is a good teen comedy and although I do think the acting could be a bit better I still found it interesting to see how the mind of a teenage girl can act out through internal and external actions.
My Rating: 2.5/4 Shamrocks
No comments:
Post a Comment