LFM Review: Easy A

By Patricia Ducey. The threshold question any movie review has to answer is, should you see this movie?  [Sigh.] There are some things to like in Easy A, but I can’t give it a nod.

First, the good: Easy A is a teen movie without much actual sex—the kids are still for the most part as innocent as, well, real kids.The story reflects on literature, like The Scarlet Letter or author Mark Twain, as well as the late John Hughes’ (more accomplished) teen oeuvre. Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci steal every scene they are in as our teen heroine Olive’s adorably loopy parents—they leave the Focker folks in the dust. Director Will Gluck intentionally pokes fun at their obnoxious PC-ness: every time they trill “no judgment” you know they are going to indeed judge someone. The dialogue, although self-consciously snarky, at times sparkles with wit, and Gluck and his cast have mastered their comic timing. Emma Stone as Olive and Penn Badgley as Todd, the couple in romantic jeopardy, are too old by a decade for the roles, as per usual – but are affecting. That’s the first two acts.

Now, for the not-so-good: this movie is totally bereft of values or character and thus fails as a story or as a lesson. And the stock character of The Princess, a feature of most every high school movie, has now been transformed into a Christian Princess – thereby exploiting what is increasingly becoming the new “Other” in filmdom: Christians.  At least director Will Gluck has had the presence of mind to state in recent interviews that he regrets this decision.

Then why did he do it? The Pew Center reports that 78.5% of Americans identify as Christians. Why would a purportedly capitalist enterprise like a Hollywood movie studio continually insult the majority of its audience? The only answer to this seemingly contradictory impulse is ideology.

I cringe at the thought of the story meetings on this one. Here once more the Hollywood myth machine offers us its alternative to the Judeo-Christian ethic: identity politics. Look at any police procedural on TV these days, for example, and watch out for the White Christian Male. He’s probably guilty of something. In teen movies, if you are a smart kid or gay, you are good. If you are Christian, you are bad. This is your lesson for the day. [And it’s an irrelevant lesson, if we’re supposed to be avoiding stereotypes of minority groups altogether.]

Gluck could have utilized the technique employed by movies from Lawrence of Arabia to TV’s 24: vary things up. For example, do not use Muslims solely as terrorists – but include Muslim characters as counterterrorism agents or ordinary people. In Easy A’s case, why not have one of the Christian kids decide to stick up for Olive, because it’s wrong to ostracize someone? You know, she could say something like: her faith compels her to walk her talk, ‘hate the sin but love the sinner,’ etc. That way you would get a villain, and some truthfulness, that this movie has abandoned.

As the trailer above reveals, Olive agrees to fake a sexual encounter with Brandon, a gay student, so that he can gain some high school cred with the bully boys. She agrees, as a misguided teen might. Surely she will come to her senses and right this wrong and support Brandon in his quest for real acceptance by the last reel? Sadly, no. She accepts a gift card from him in “payment” for her deed. As word gets around, more boys approach her and pay her for their own fake deflowering. Why does she do it, why does she accept money for it? Her family is well off; there is no set-up explaining that she needs the money. She just takes it, like any prostitute would. There goes the parallel story with Hester Prynne, who did not ask for or accept a penny from anyone. The rest of the class gradually ostracizes her, led by the evangelical Marianne (Amanda Bynes) and her Christian club mates. And you can guess what is coming—the Christians themselves are a bunch of hypocrites!

The moral rootlessness of the narrative makes a complete mess out of act three and the denouement. Act 3 is where all the wrongs are supposed to be righted, good triumphs over evil, true love wins over all. But in a movie with no right and wrong, the characters simply self-destruct. Olive searches the Bible, for example, and finds nothing applicable; she visits local pastors and her guidance counselor for answers and finds them all as depraved or unavailable as she feared. Full disclosure here: I am not a religious person, but even I could find something in the Bible to put a bunch of Mean Girls in their place. Why doesn’t she? There is no answer except that it would soften the Bad Christian meme. She then inexplicably tattles on the guidance counselor to her husband, the movie’s one and only good guy, and destroys their marriage. Ha, ha, snark, snark!

This is not screwball comedy or farce, the humor of which comes from the mistaken notion that characters are misbehaving – when they really aren’t – nor R-rated comedy, whose humor comes from extended gross-outs. Gluck reportedly removed numerous repetitions of the F-word to move it from R to PG-13, but – not to worry – the unexpurgated version will soon be available on DVD.

Pick any teenager out of the mall and you will find a life rich in theme and character and worthy of a story. But movie teens these days are not real teens; they are avatars of a brave new world entirely of studio execs’ imagining, a cinematic rendering of our own Little Red Book. If your teenagers want to see it, make sure you talk with them about it later. It does offer some important lessons, if only by accident.

Posted on September 20th, 2010 at 1:19pm.