Like many High School movies, Easy A is all about an outcast, in this cas,e that social outcast being Olive (Emma Stone), a lady whose always being ignored by her classmates and peers and tends to spend her entire weekends dancing to Natasha Bedingfield songs (which, truth be told, I also do). But then she fibs to her best friends that she's lost her virginity, a lie Marianne (Amanda Bynes), a super uptight uber-Christian bully, overhears and begins spreading the falsehood (that she thinks is real) around school that Oliva has lost her virginity, a development all the other students find so scandalous that they begin to notice Olive for the first time.
Relishing the attention, Oliva begins to embrace her persona, which she builds upon by letting awkward or schlubby guys at the school tell everyone else they were intimate with her in exchange for payments like gift cards. The lies begin to build upon themselves, challenging Olive mightily in the process. Handling the topic of female sexuality head-on like this is undeniably bold for a mainstream American comedy, a realm where, in a pre-Bridesmaids world, exploring the topic of sex was something usually reserved for male characters with women being used as mostly props for them to either obtain or lust after.
So it's a nice change of pace to see an American comedy outright grapple with female sexuality though the film's handling of said topic is sort of scattered, with Easy A swerving from thinking sex is inherently bad to inherently good at the drop of a hat in a manner that, despite Oliva being out of her element for most of the movie (though that's primarily due to the lying she's done and not strictly the concept of sex) doesn't feel intentional. Olive's final declaration that she can handle doing or not doing sex and either way it's no one else's business feels like a cohesive idea that the rest of the film would have done well to carry over since it could have led to a more cohesive depiction of female sexuality that doesn't occasionally (though not too often) does go for the arcane concept that "women having sex = always always bad".
The more confused way Easy A handles the idea of female sexuality seems to be an element of its script having some real sloppy elements to it. Lisa Kudrow's guidance counselor character, who becomes a pivotal character in the third act, is abruptly introduced super late in the game in a way that doesn't feel natural at all while other plot lines (namely Olive's antagonistic relationship with Marianne) sputter out in the ending scenes of the movie for no good reason despite being such a major presence early on. Utilizing stylized caricatures of gay individuals and overweight human beings (a portly fellow, who's a total jerk who tries to blackmail Olive, is seen hogging down junk food in two of his three brief appearances) also undermines the movie's mission to be a more "realistic" and "down-to-Earth" depiction of High School drama compared to past High School set movies.
All that having been said, Easy A still registers as solid for the most part mostly thanks to Emma Stone's fantastic lead performance. It's easy to see why (after supporting turns in fellow low-budget Sony comedies Superbad and Zombieland, both of which I need to see) she became such a big deal thanks to her ability to be so realistic in her depiction of the various sides of Olive's personality, whether it's her in her most vulnerable moments or her being awkward at a Lobster Shack date or waltzing confidently down the halls with a red A on her chest. Plus, she's got sublime comedic timing, her various humorous voice-over observations are some of the best moments of Easy A.
The whole cast is actually pretty good, especially Thomas Haden Church (always cool to see him!) as Olive's favorite teacher and delightful turns from Stanely Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive's totally chillaxed parents. All of these delightful actors dropping lots of witty lines and bouncing off of one and other, as well as the way the movie handles Olive's more intimate and impotent moments, really do help carry Easy A over its spotty script and an ending that eschews reinforcing the movies own identity and instead goes for a cheap homage to The Breakfast Club feels like such a wasted opportunity (they should have totally played Pocketful Of Sunshine instead of being the umpteenth movie to revel in how the ending of The Breakfast Club existed). It can't hold a candle (or even sixteen of them!) to both classic older High School movies like Dazed And Confused or modern-day classic High School movies like The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, but Easy A is more often than not reasonably amusing and well-acted fare with some really memorable lines of dialogue in it (this movie didn't dozens of gifs for nothing!) that feels like it needed to commit more to its own identity and its central idea of grappling with female sexuality in a more consistently positive manner in order to create a more cohesive movie on a storytelling level.
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