“Easy A” is easily the best teen comedy in years, maybe since “Clueless.” Today’s entry resembles 1995’s still memorable, satiric tale of contemporary high school folkways in many respects: Both feature bright, adorable girl protagonists savvy about the social structure they are caught in but not quite ready for its sexual pressures. And both highly entertaining farces modernize classic literature. They create from it a template for self-aware pop culture references, hilarious/snappy dialogue, and even some shrewd insight into the existing adolescent experience.
‘Easy A’
Rating » 4 out of 5 starsStars » Emma Stone, Stanley Tucci, Amanda BynesDirector » Will GluckRated PG-13 for mature thematic elements involving teen sexuality, language and some drug materialRunning time » 92 minutes
In the same way that “Clueless” reconfigured Jane Austin’s “Emma,” “Easy A” repurposes Nathaniel Hawthorne’s somber tragedy of Puritan adultery, stigma and hypocrisy, “The Scarlet Letter.” But in this post-feminist age, there are no passive victims like Hester Prynne. Olive Penderghast, played by smoky-voiced redhead Emma Stone (“Superbad,” “Zombieland”), is a brainy nobody at an Ojai, Calif., high school who manufactures her own sex scandal and literally brands herself with the Big Red “A.”
