Easy A.

After spending a week being destroyed pretty much daily by my ex girlfriend and spending every other moment drunk, I could see the depressing movies weren’t helping very much. So here’s Easy A, Enjoy!

Easy A is for the most part a cliched teen movie. Even if it keeps saying it isn’t. Emma Stone plays a girl who gets caught up in a rumour that she’s a slut. At first it works out well, eventually it gets out of hand and then everything works out for the best in the end. What a fucking surprise. To be fair to the movie, the pacing is brilliant, the acting is great, the writing is fantastic and a movie that can make me smirk and chuckle is probably going to make the normal person laugh out loud. Plus Emma Stone is absolutely gorgeous.

And that really is the main problem with this film, it’s a pretty much by the books movie. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It functions and does exactly what it is supposed to. In many places it even does cliches in a really really good way. And when a film isn’t particularly great or particularly bad, just pretty standard then there isn’t really much for me to say. It has a feel good ending and as far as cliches go, this does them very well. And that’s all there is to it…

Okay fine, erm…I guess something special about the movie is the way cliches are implemented. I mean yeah it’s a high school and Emma Stone plays a fake slut but this film doesn’t really have the usual set of geeks, jocks and weirdoes. The ‘villains’ of the film are dogooder Christian’s, not jocks. One Christian is a total bitch and another breaks all the rules and ends up sleeping with his guidance counsellor, so they even break the conventions of the broken conventions. Hell the guy Emma gets in the end is probably the only ‘jock’ in the film. And hey, the first person Emma’s character helps is a gay kid, not a weirdo or geek. Emma herself isn’t the usual greasy, four eyed chick who takes off her glasses and lets down her hair and suddenly she’s beautiful character she’s just…normal. So I guess you can give the film something for mixing it up.

Further still in Emma’s (why is it I always forget lead names, so professional!) confession she does make some very interesting points. Is lying about being a slut worse than being a slut? And her monologue about how she wishes her life was an 80’s teen movie directed by John Hughes, well anyone can relate to that, but it’s much better written than just saying ‘I wish my life was like a movie’.

Honestly, Easy A reminded me why I have so few feel good movies in my collection but so many depressing movies. I hate feel good movies, not because they’re feel good movies and I want to keep up an aura of gloom but because I find feel good movies insulting. Yeah it works out for the best for the characters but always in the most simplified way that will most probably never work out like that for you. So if you watch a feel good movie when your life at that moment of time totally stinks, you’ll probably feel worse at the end of the movie than you did at the start. At least at the end of a depressing movie usually the characters are worse off than you are (and don’t you dare claim that knowing someone is worse off doesn’t make you feel heaps better) whereas somehow the end of a feel good movie comes across as just rubbing it in your face.

Well since this review is incredibly short, I’m going to test out a suggestion, a rating system. I’ve always been pretty apposed to rating systems, people concentrate to much on a rating than the actual review and a friend suggested this ages ago and I ignored them, but since I need some sort of padding, here goes! When you do me some critique, tell me if you think I should keep a rating system (and if so how I can make it better!) or if I should keep my reviews how they were and not include one.

Visuals.
3/5
The cinematography or editing won’t really blow you away or break any ground. There is a nice little visual effect with the camera zipping around the school to represent how fast the rumour spreads though. So yeah the film functions visually.

Level of Awesome.
4/5
Watching Emma play a badass, sexy chick dressed like a stripper makes this film fucking awesome. That aside, this film has some great characters and a good sense of humour and considering the ‘teen comedy’ genre is generally in the same category as ‘trash’, I think this film is pretty awesome.

Soundtrack.
4/5
Although for the most part the soundtrack is pretty underplayed, there is a good song selection here and any reference to the great song choices of John Hughes is great. Also, Emma Stone does a sexy musical number, awesome.

Relatability.
2/5
My biggest problem with feel good movies. As ironic as it maybe and you may think I’m just saying this because of my own experiences but a lot of people watch their parents divorce, they watched loved ones get sick and die and go through many messy break ups. But it’s a lot less often that you just happen to end up marrying that girl you’ve been in love with since you met way back in Year 3 when you were about 8. So often as a film along this vein comes to a close in a way that could never fucking happen to any normal person, I feel more miserable at the end of films like these than a film about fucking cancer, because I know I could never have a happy ending like that. Or at least not easily.

Chance you’ll watch it again?
4/5
Easily. It’s an easy going movie. Emma Stone is gorgeous. It’s got great pacing. It’s incredibly funny. The perfect sort of film to have on in the background or to hang out with friends too.

Think About It!

-Locke.