Movie Review: Easy A

While unquestionably wittier and a good bit funnier than most other comedies these days, I still can't decided how I feel about the premise of Easy A.  I don't dislike movies just because they involved people being normal, sinning human beings, but when a moral message gets sent across the screen I either start dancing in the living room or the whole movie gets flushed down my mental toilet.

The premise is that the main character flippantly lies about what happened on a date just to get a friend off her case.  The lie spreads as a rumor and she perpetuates it.  Eventually, the lie becomes dangerous and destructive and manages to clear up the truth in front of everyone.

Halfway through the movie, she's calling herself a sort of "helper of the downtrodden" because she's lying for people who can't deal with being "uncool."  This immediately got me riled up; the use of lies and avoidance of truth for people's "benefit" is a theme that I have seen many places in TV and movies and it is so far from even being pragmatic, not to mention moral, that it really peeves me.

When the situation is resolved at the end of the film, there is no repenting of the lies.  There is only being really sad that it got so out of hand and, what do you know, there's a boy!

I will take this paragraph to say that the boy-subplot was so canned I nearly put this movie in the same category as Freak Friday.  The boy who has popped up oh-so-conveniently every 20 minutes just falls into her arms at the end of the movie, no questions asked about this huge lie she has been perpetuating by dressing in the sluttiest possible way while attending high school.  For weeks.

Don't worry, girls!  It's totally realistic.

The performances in this movie were really solid.  Ema Stone was great, and the actor who plays her favorite teacher needs to be in more movies.  He is a hilarious character actor, if one movie can be enough to make a call on it.  The performances by those who played her family were also great; some of the funniest lines came from the family scenes.

In summary: while it is a very funny movie, it is very entrenched in modern ideas about truth and makes a half-hearted effort to actually give the movie any helpful point to the whole ordeal.  And the boy thing is just not believable.  Sorry.  It's not.

That's all.  Oh, by the way, I think I'm going to review movies on the blog now, in addition to the other musings.  Carry on!