When I saw the trailer for Easy A, I was intrigued. I thought it looked like a smart comedy – and it was. Rotten Tomatoes agrees: it’s at 86% today.
It’s about a girl who, partly due to peer pressure and partly due to her soft spot for the downtrodden, acquires a reputation as a slut at her high school, even though she has actually experienced none of the sexual exploits attributed to her.
Let me just get my complaints out of the way first. Well, it’s really just one main complaint: the portrayal of high school is totally unrealistic. Okay, not totally, but very.
[**Side note: E has just learned to say "totally". He first got it hearing a character say it on How I Met Your Mother - had his head in the toy box at the time. It's hilariously well-pronounced: "Todely!" So this evening I'm reading Mr. Silly to my kid and I say, "Look at that chicken with rubber boots and an umbrella - isn't that silly?" He of course replies, "Totally!"**]
Back to unrealistic high school. I’m sorry, but you can’t have this character – or any, for that matter – go from being “anonymous” and “a non-entity”, as protagonist Olive puts it, to being the subject of ravenous gossip. If people have no idea who you are, I aver that they will not care about the status of your virginity. (If you think I’m wrong, please say so.) PLUS, there is no way that this smart, beautiful girl is anonymous at her school. Movie-makers use both these strategies fairly regularly, but it doesn’t make them any more believable. Continued…
