Easy A (Rhoades)

“Easy A” Goes For Easy Laughs
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

There’s a new teen comedy called "Easy A," about a high school virgin who pretends to be promiscuous. In it, she makes the wry comment, “Judy Blume never prepared me for this.”

“Yeah, we’ve seen that,” chuckles Judy’s husband, George Cooper. “A good laugh!”
In this high school farce, Olive (Emma Stone) helps out her gay pal by pretending to have sex with him, replete with ooo’s and ahh’s and creaking bedsprings, to allow him to stay in the closet. Problem is, now everybody thinks she’s a teenage slut. Oh well.

“Easy A” is up to its sexual high jinks at the Tropic Cinema. The double entendre of the movie’s title refers to school grades as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.” After studying it in class, a mean girl suggests Olive should wear one. Next thing you know she’s flaunting a bright red letter A on her black bustier, wearing her new rep proudly. Or at least with her head held high.

Emma describes it this way: “This rumor gets started about her that she’s promiscuous. She decides not to squash the rumor, but to just go with it and see where it leads. And it just spirals completely out of control. She starts being ostracized by all these people and decides to sew an A on her clothes. She kind of makes a show out of it and it starts going really bad really quickly.”

You’ve seen Emma Stone in the tongue-in-cheek “Zombieland.” And heard her voice as a character in “Marmaduke.” Although she’s known as a redhead, her natural hair color is brown. Producer Judd Apatow suggested she dye it red for her role in “Superbad” and she kept it.

Also in “Easy A” is Amanda Bynes as one of Olive’s nemeses. You may remember her from such films as “Hairspray” and “She’s the Man.” Also on board is Thomas Haden Church, who was nominated for an Oscar in “Sideways.” The great Patricia Clarkson as Rosemary. Plus Lisa Kudrow (famous for being one of TV’s “Friends”). And Malcolm McDowell as the school principal.

Director Will Gluck (“Fired Up”) says of the teen comedy, “I’m very influenced by John Hughes, and I tried to make a movie that he wouldn’t be embarrassed to watch. I also like doing movies with a female protagonist, so I tried to marry the two. Hopefully, it’s influenced by both.”

It wasn’t a movie he expected to make. “I swore after ‘Fired Up!’ I would never do a high school comedy again, but this script came in and it was special. This movie is about reputation, and that never goes away.”

He adds, “Frankly, most of the people going through that are in high school, so I always wanted it to be PG-13 and I rewrote it to broaden its appeal. There’s no reason for it to be R — it’s a movie about sexuality with no sex. Also, I always like pushing the envelope with stuff, and when it’s R, there’s no envelope.”
So is this a pro-abstinence movie? “I say, no, not at all,” insists Gluck. “This movie is a pro mind-your-own-business movie. Do your own thing, just don’t make it define you.”

The film’s message? “Have sex when it’s on your own terms, and don’t tell everybody about it.”

srhoades@aol.com
[from Solares Hill]