A teen comedy that modernizes “The Scarlet Letter” with corsets and high school sex rumors seems like D-movie material, but “Easy A” is a surprisingly smart movie backed by a talented cast.
The plotline is simple: Teenager Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) goes from being a wallflower to the most talked-about girl at school. Her notoriety heightens when she begins wearing corsets, embroidered with a scarlet “A,” to transform herself into the gutsier, modern-day version of Hester Prynne.
But of course, the role of “Easy A” ends up being not so easy for Olive.
It all begins with a lie she tells her best friend in the school bathroom – that she lost her virginity over the weekend. Word of her deflowering spreads around the school at an unrealistically fast rate, and soon she is getting a lot of male attention.
But her notoriety really begins after she stages a hookup with a closeted gay friend from school to boost his reputation. Soon she is sacrificing her own reputation to help out the not-so-popular boys at school in exchange for gift cards.
The plotline itself could easily have made for another formulaic teen movie, but Stone’s ability to never take herself seriously makes this one fresh.
The movie is so packed with jokes and clever literary references (not just to “The Scarlet Letter”) that viewers need not worry about clichéd movie scenes where the protagonist is shoveling whole boxes of chocolate into her mouth and crying about the popular boy at school that she likes.
There is little romance in this movie, but Penn Badgley’s co-star role as “Woodchuck Todd” is cute, and maybe the only believable part of the movie. And seeing him sing a terrible hip-hop version of “Happy Birthday” in a lobster hat at a restaurant somehow adds to his charm.
Smaller roles from Amanda Bynes, a “Jesus freak” at school who tries to save Olive from her sins, and Patricia Clarkson, Olive’s post-hippy mother, add to the movie’s lightheartedness.
It might not be what Nathaniel Hawthorne had in mind when he penned “The Scarlet Letter,” but this modern spin on his novel is a lot easier to get through.
