EASY A Post Release

It's a little uneven but great fun, and hopefully it'll make the rest of the world realise what everyone who's seen SUPERBAD and ZOMBIELAND already knows: Emma Stone is awesome. (Remember when everyone was thinking Lindsay Lohan was a star when she was really just a flash in the pan? Stone has the screen presence and energy Lohan lacks.)

And Tucci and Clarkson are the goods in this. Tucci has a seemingly ad-libbed one-liner to his adopted son that just slayed me.

That Huck Finn bit was a big piece of what the fuck?! Nearly fell out of seat laughing.

I wasn't as entertained by this as others but I think it's all rooted in a lack of personal connection to the movie rather than anything it's doing wrong. If I had to complain I'd say it's trying too hard in a few areas, namely Amanda Bynes' character. Marianne is kind of set up as the villain, but she doesn't play an active enough role in any of the things that happen to Olive (she's the catalyst, but since you don't see it, the act doesn't really get associated with Marianne), so she's just around, doing bits of extremely broad, hit-and-miss comic schtick.

Assorted thoughts:
- Characters talking to the camera (especially on webcams) is aggravating. Please stop doing this, Hollywood. Easy A gets a bit of a pass because it's plot relevant but still.
- Emma Stone's drunk ditz act is unparalleled. When she shows up to the big party with Brandon, everything she does is gold.
- I thought "god damn" was unacceptable for a PG-13 (I know they cut out some "goddammit"s from the PG-13 Die Hard 4 and they're often censored on TV) but then Lisa Kudrow says it like 18 times in a row. That, coupled with the constant frank sexual dialogue and references, I think someone must have actually died getting this film a PG-13 rating.
- Needs more Thomas Haden Church.
- Why is Malcolm McDowell in this?
- The director of Dodgeball plays the Quizno's guy.

Funny and cute. Enjoyed Stone, but for me it was all about the supporting cast.

Tucci and Clarkson are amazing. Church definitely needed more time and Kudrow is still absolutely beautiful. I want her as my guidance counselor!!

I think that more than just being entertaining, Easy A actually has a lot of implied commentary and criticism of the preoccupations of the current NA high school generation. The progressive attitude toward parenting and the mocking of fundy religion are expressed beautifully and add to layers of quality on the script level that the film itself never seems to dwell on, which in this case kind of works in its favor.

I see it as kind of a successor to John Hughes, which is a relationship the filmmakers clearly understand and even encourage. It's pulling together a lot of connective thread and showing a bit of what teens are like now (unrealistic pep rally song and dance numbers and extravagant pool parties aside).

I wrote a lengthy, but detailed review that goes into this stuff, if anyone's interested: http://thunderclam.wordpress.com/201...s-for-awesome/

I'll see this just for Emma Stone.

Alot of hype were given to Emma Roberts, but looks like this Emma (Stone) is quietly carving a nice niche for herself in Hollywood.

Emma Stone is oddly slimmed out in this. She makes this comment early on about having below average sized breasts. And I was like "?" because I was thinking about Superbad where she seemed pretty curvy. And in Zombieland she is definitely rocking a chest.

But definitely way skinny in Easy A. Kinda reminded me of Grace Park's emaciated new look in Hawaii 5-0 but where the former is making it work, the latter (and more heartbreaking) is not.

Great movie, but I really registered to post that Emma Roberts sucks. I went to see "Winning Season" thinking it was Emma Stone in the movie instead of Roberts, my mistake. No biggie since another actor I like, Sam Rockwell, was in the film too. I chose the last showtime on opening night thinking I'd have the theatre mostly to myself, but to my surprise a lot of people started flooding in until it was packed. It was a really young crowd and they seemed dressed for a night out at a party or something. When I heard a girl behind me say "Wow, its so strange seeing it with all these people!" I knew something was up. Turned around and it was Roberts with a group of her friends. "Cool" I thought, and wondered if Rockwell was in the audience too. I'm assuming he was since they cheered his name in the credits as well as Roberts. Long story short, she kept yapping to her friends all during the movie. I would turn around to give her the evil glare (while her friends threw me the "what are you looking at?" wince), and they would go back down to a whisper to annoyingly audible again. So, thank you miss Roberts and co. for ruining your own stupid movie for me.

The actual movie was about 6/10. Done to death story with only Rockwell standing out and an utterly wasted Rob Corddry.

So yeah, finally saw this. Tucci's "Where are you from originally?" is indeed an MVP moment.

What I really like in the scenes with the family is how the movie makes them interesting and human without drumming up conflict. A lesser film would have Olive telling ever-more-elaborate lies to her parents, culminating in an angry tantrum followed by a sobbing confession. Here, the moment when Olive explains the situation passes off-screen, and it doesn't seem like an omission because we know that these people talk to each other.

Other likes: Clarkson, Church, Kudrow. And the "gutpunch = orgasm noise" bit is pure gold.

Late to the party but had to add some love. One of the better teen comedies I've seen in a while and the supporting cast was awesome. It looks like everyone was game especially the adults in the cast.

It's good. But my god the supporting cast. Any scene with Tucci, Clarckson or Haden Church was gold. Specially Tucci talking to the adoptive son. It's unfair to a movie of this low caliber to have Tucci as a secret weapon. He's quickly become the most versatile and amazing supporting actor out there.

The Stone - Lohan comparison is dead on. This was very similar to Mean Girls.

My friend who I saw it with was really annoyed with all the glib dialogue from the parents, thinking it made the movie seem like it was trying too hard to be 'clever', but I didn't mind. I had a great time, because along with Emma Stone's endless likability and charm, the 80s movie references really melted my butter. My favourite one was when after her horrible guitar-playing, she declares, "Never had one lesson!". When I got so excited about that, my friend looked at me weird since he didn't get the reference.

Yeah, best teen comedy since Mean Girls and I'm not saying that because of my huge crush on Emma Stone. I generally expect most teen movies to be steeped in cliches. That's part of the growing up process. Thankfully the dialogue here is similarly sharp. The lead guy/mascot dude comes off as the male equivalent to the manic pixie dream girl but whatevs.

Stone carries the fuck out of this movie. Church and especially the awesome Clarckson/Tucci duo were sublime but the movie would have fallen flat of its face if Stone wasn't so on the ball. Seriously, this is what a star making role looks like. She was cool in all the other stuff I've seen her in but they were much smaller roles. She's in almost every scene in this movie and she just kills in each and every one of them.

Plus, I'm a sucker for a smoky voice.

Emma Stone is great here. Imagine how good she'd have been if she was in a movie that wasn't a clumsy, pandering, and cartoonish mess.

But for those of you who saw this wishing the whole movie could be about Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson, you need to see Blind Date.

 

Yup. There's some fun dialogue in this film and a lot of the jokes and charming moments are nicely delivered but the editing is so awkward the timing is knackered on too many of them, especially when banter is happening. In fact the editing is such a pile of cack even I noticed a bunch of continuity shenanigans and I normally miss all that stuff.

It has some fun bits, especially from Stanley Tucci, Amanda Bynes and Thomas Haden Church, and I definitely lolled a bunch of times, but it's edited sloppy as fuck and makes very little sense in terms of character development. 10 Things I Hate About You pwns this film.
 

I wanted to like this movie a lot.  Emma Stone in Zombieland was just so damn crush worthy that I was rooting for this one, but it`s just sooooooo damn hip.  Emma shares knowing looks with her parents whilst exchanging witty meta dialogue, knowingly being dry and precious.  I was cringing the whole way through this movie like it was written by Diablo Cody or something.

I don't like Emma Stone. There, I said it. So overall, I didn't really care for this. Stanley Tucci saying something along the lines of "Let's Bucket List this bitch!" was pretty hilarious, though.

Stanley was funny almost despite his stupid knowingly meta father routine.  It was like a comedian making me laugh hysterically with nothing but poop jokes.

 

 

True, it was drenched in its own meta but to me this film and its lead character Olive were far more dorky and unselfaware than Juno and its lead character Juno. Juno is hip and cynical and conscious of being cool while Olive is far more goofy and is an optimist and even though the plot decides it wants her to enjoy her infamy for a while it also paints her in a way that she doesn't give a shit about being cool. That's just one of the ways the character writing fails for me even though almost all the dialogue is fun.

 

And with Juno there always felt like a sense the writer was trying to prove something about their own cleverness, whereas with Easy A the dialogue felt a lot more like the writer was just having a lot of fun. And I like Juno overall, which is certainly directed significantly more skillfully than Easy A, I just don't love some of that dialogue.

 

Ha! That was probably my least favourite comedic line of his.

Emma Stone and Amanda Bynes were both really good in this.  The movie was OK, but I will always have a soft spot for it since it was shot in my home town, at my high school.  It's fun but surreal to watch for that reason. 

Fell for Emma's Olive (Smart, pretty, and funny...the trifecta) in this pic fairly quickly. SO much so, I can't believe that she wouldn't be in high demand among the guys her age. Course, maybe she was too busy narrating and being a worrying hermit to notice all the offscreen guys crushing on her. Other than wanting to be such a people-pleaser, I couldn't find too many faults with her amongst a genre that's filled with the chick-flick-cliche (see Meg Ryan) "everyone should love me for who I am, regardless of how neurotic that may be!!!" And the faults she has, she recognizes and accepts accountability ultimately. Coming of age tale instead of romantic comedy here helps. Refreshing to see an introspective female lead character with an arc of her own instead of the "misunderstood and quirky welcome mat", where the men are the only ones who need a personality makeover/revalation.

 

I liked this one a bunch, even with the flaws.