Easy A
2010
**½
Director: Will Gluck
Cast: Emma Stone, Penn Badgley, Amanda Bynes, Cam Gigandet, Thomas Haden Church, Patricia Clarkson, Lisa Kudrow, Malcolm McDowell, Aly Michalka, Stanley Tucci, Dan Byrd
When pressured, Olive claims that she lost her virginity during the weekend. Before long, everyone in her high school knows and judges her for it. With her reputation ruined, she decides to give the gossipers something to feast on. Will Gluck's teen comedy is more ambitious than most films in this formula-bound genre, but it is too campy and overcooked, and not terribly funny. Bert V. Royal's script was inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and it makes clever references to 1980s comedies like Say Anything, Can't Buy Me Love and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Olive is a resourceful but susceptible young woman, her love interest is bland but sweet, her English teacher is likeable, and her parents are supportive but annoyingly flippant. All the other characters are hysterical caricatures, and the respective performances are awful.
