Easy A

This is always a tough time for movies because the movies end up being hit and miss. Meaning you never exactly know what to expect when you go to see a movie. Friday night as part of a date night we went and saw Easy A. This was a teen movie that when I saw the preview I thought it has a lot of promise to being a very funny movie. Of course it is always a great feeling to when what you thought when seeing a preview are met when you go see the movie. Easy A ended up being a very enjoyable teenage comedy. This movie really ended up being a great tribute to the great 80's movies that were made by John Hughes.

Emma Stone does a great job as Olive, a high school girl who through one lie to her best friend, begins to use the high school rumor mill to up her social standing only to later realize it has made a mess of her life. Stone definitely has the potential to be the Molly Ringwald of this generation. She can do typical teen comedy lead autopilot/earn our sympathy, she can command the improvisation-like tangential dry humor that has defined the comedies of the last five or so years and she can be the sensitive, fragile Molly Ringwald type. Nothing feels forced or unnatural in her performance. She seems to be having fun and milking to goofy nature of Royal's script.

Most importantly Easy A is successful because it never stops being Olive's story. They are really able to keep the story all about her with what is something that has not been really used in that the telling of the story is told with her not only narrating the film, but that the movie goes back to her telling the story with the use of her video blog. With it being a reflective telling of the story this is what truly helps the film from veering off course. It's about Olive wrestling with this lie and her feelings about how she wants to be perceived, along with her understandable pity for the boys who request her "services." High school's rough and reputation seems to be everything. Some elements of the high-school experience in Easy A might be way off, but that's dead on.

While I really enjoyed Emma Stone's character, I thought Amanda Bynes as the ultra conservative religious high school student was brilliant. Her character reminded me a lot of Mandy Moore in Saved, but she took that character moving it to the next level. Her portrayal is perfect and it allows for some great comedic moments with Emma Stone. I also really enjoyed Olive's parents and the hippie/caring parents that they brought to the film. There were many moments throughout the film that made me laugh with the interaction that they had with Olive. Lastly, I loved Thomas Haden Church as the one teacher in the school that we are introduced to in the school. He gives a great twist on the whole "hip teacher" with all the different cliches he spouts out to all the different students.

With this movie being a great homage to John Hughes, I  enjoyed all the references to the 80's Hughes movies from Sixteen Candles to Can't Buy Me Love. Really for me the one I loved the most though was that of the references specifically to Ferris Buehler's Day Off. Personally I noticed five specific references to Ferris Buehler's Day Off, I challenge those of you that go see this to leave comments as to how many Ferris Buehler references you find.

This movie I found to be very fun, and while it did push the limits at points I found this comedy to be a lot funnier than most of the comedies that get put out nowadays. While they pushed limits I felt that this movie was very similar to the great John Hughes movies of the 80's. The acting and the interaction of all the different roles helped to make this movie, because of that I am giving this movie three buckets of popcorn out of five. This is one of those movies that I felt was worth the price of admission to see in the theater.

-The Movie Man-