Easy A gets a solid B+

All of us, even those who were born after the fact, know that the 80's was the golden era for the teen sex romp comedies. This was pretty much thanks to John Hughes and the brat pack who help turn out classics that still resonate such as The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Say Anything and even Ferris Bueller's Day Off. But sadly, that era has gone, John Hughes has passed on to make teen sex comedies for God and Molly Ringwald has gone onto become a TV mom for a preggers teenager.

Sure, once in a while something like Ten Things I Hate About You or Mean Girls would come along and make us yen for those days again when twenty something actors could play convincing teenagers and movies could have a sense of fun yet still be grounded with some type of ambiguous moral message. Alas, kids today are generally stuck with shit like Twilight which is all angst and no fun and stars like Lindsey Lohan who make one decent teen comedy before going off the deep end and showing their lady parts to the world.

This is why the world needs a movie like Easy A which harks back to the good old days when a teen comedy could be about sex and still have a message and a starlet like Emma Stone who can play a convincing teenager yet has the the maturity not to show her beaver off to paparazzi well getting out of limos.

Okay, here is a quick synopsis of Easy A:

Take the Scarlet Letter, add a little 16 Candles romance, a dash of Mean Girls High School Observation and perhaps a touch of Juno parenting and Bam, you have an winning teen sex romp comedy where no one actually gets laid, yet it is still fun to watch. Emma Stone plays Olive, a clean cut girl and tells a little fib about banging a college boy and soon finds herself with a reputation after the rumor is spread by the goody goody (played with vicious glee by Amanda Bynes) who overhears in the bathroom.

However, instead of crying about her reputation, she embraces it instead, reveling in her new found popularity. She then takes it one step further and becomes a fake skank for hire for the meek and downtrodden: sort of like a hooker with a heart of gold, but a this hooker never actually spreads her legs. Anyways, things get out of hand, she meets a good guy and now she has to figure out how to get out of it and wind up with the guy who is sort of a cross between John Cusack in Say Anything and that one dude with the nice car in sixteen candles.

The only thing that is really hard to believe in this movie is the premise that Olive has somehow managed to go unnoticed by the high school boys up until she develops a reputation. I mean, come on, Emma Stone is hot. hotter than Molly Ringwald ever dreamed to be. But, then again, this is something the audience is just going to have to suspend their disbelief about in order to accept the premise of the movie. Perhaps it is because she hangs out with a girl with much bigger boobs than her.

The thing that I liked most about the movie was the surprisingly hilarious banter that is scattered throughout. Olive's parents (played by Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkston) are especially funny. Speaking of Olive's parents, I thought they were the best teen parents to show up in the movie since Juno. They simply ooze quirky California culture while at the same time showing that even sun baked Cali parents can be warm and supportive. This is especially true for Olive's mother who comes across as surprisingly realistic and endearing.

All in all, Easy A is an above average film that makes you miss those good old days when teen movies were neither horrendous satires about teen movies nor angst loaded bullshit featuring werewolves and vampires. I highly recommend you add Easy A to your Netflix que and enjoy it, because it will probably be a few years before another good teen movie like it comes out again.