A review of "Easy A"

Confessions of a Film Junkie: A review of “Easy A”

By: Brian Cotnoir

     The film “Easy A” is loosely based off the novel “the Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, but unlike Hawthorne’s literary works, this film is a piece of garbage.           

   The film tells the story of Olive Penderghast, who is played by Emma Stone; Olive is this pretty, but for some mysterious reason, “unpopular girl” at her high school.  One day Olive lies to her best friend, Rhiannon, and tells her that she lost her virginity, word quickly travels around the school and Olive is quickly labeled a “slut” and feels the scorn of many of her classmates.  Olive decides to take her new label as the school slut and turn it into a business; she gives boys permission to say they had sex with her in exchange for gift cards.  Olive thinks nothing of her little business at first, but things start to slowly go downhill for Olive and now she’s going to do everything she can to make things right and end her reputation as the “school skank”.                                   

    My one major problem with this film is that I feel it is totally un-relatable to high school kids in this day and age.  With teen pregnancy rates at an all-time high, it’s very hard to believe that this one girl is the only person having sex while in high school; especially a high school in the state of California.  Maybe if this film would have been filmed in the 1980’s (or at least set in the 1980’s) it would have done well, but because it’s set in present time the story doesn’t really make that much sense.  

   The whole time I spent watching this film it kept coming off like it was trying to be a John Hughes film, but it wasn’t. There are clear references to Hughes films in this movie, but they’re not clever and they’re not subtle, they are just blatantly acknowledging that they are making a John Hughes reference.  I think that “Easy A” should have tried to be its own original film instead of trying to be a John Hughes film.        

   Another confusing point I’d like to address is why are these boys giving Olive hundreds of dollars—I kid you not—to say that they had sex with her?  You could get a pretty nice escort with that kind of money and you’ll actually get laid you fucking morons!  Also, I like how the “conservative-girls” in this film dress the sluttiest.  Finally, the people who play Olive’s parents in this film are just idiotic.  They are without a doubt the worst movie parents I have ever seen; they are just so over the top and unrealistic that there is just nothing funny or credible about their performances.                         

   “Easy A” was bland, unoriginal, unfunny, and totally unrealistic.  I’ve met a lot of people who actually like this film (pretty much all of them being female), but I just didn’t like anything about it. I give the film “Easy A” an F for lack of originality and poor effort.