Easy A

Things get completely out of hand when Olive (Emma Stone) tells a little white lie that precipitates one giant rumour in this hysterically funny ensemble piece. A modern-day twist on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter, Easy A follows Olive as things go from bad to hilariously worse in her gossip-ridden high school.

Olive Penderghast is a clean-cut, self-described non-entity. People can’t even remember her name, let alone give her the time of day. To say the school’s student body is cliquey is an understatement. Viciously gossipy might be more apt, and most catty of all is Marianne (Amanda Bynes), leader of the hypocritically nasty Christian group. Olive flies under their radar until the day her best friend, Brandon (Dan Byrd), comes out. Olive is supportive, but her fellow classmates are anything but, and Brandon is tormented by an onslaught of bullying. In an effort to help him, Olive suggests that he pretend to be straight, and to prove his heterosexuality, she pretends to lose her virginity to him in a faked sex scene as hysterical as it is effective. Now Brandon is the toast of the school, but Olive is the school tramp. To make matters worse, her English class is studying The Scarlet Letter, and some none-too-flattering comparisons are drawn between her and Hester Prynne.

So what’s a girl to do? Not one to take things lying down, Olive gives herself a sultry new makeover, takes matters into her own hands and, pinning a red A to her dress, struts through the school halls, haters be damned. But when she starts getting requests from all kinds of lovable nerds to fake sleep with them, her plan begins to go terribly awry.

With riotously funny performances from Stone, Bynes as the bitchy goody-two-shoes, and Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci as Olive’s overly understanding hippie parents, the casting is perfect. Reminiscent of a John Hughes high school comedy, Easy A is an uproarious reminder of the fun and foibles of young adulthood. –TIFF