Easy A (2010) - so witty it's almost unfair

directed by Will Gluck / starring Emma Stone, Amanda Bynes, Penn Badgley, Thomas Hayden Church, Patricia Clarkson, Stanley Tucci

How refreshing to watch a funny high school comedy! Like, actually funny! We haven't had these in a while. I mean, Mean Girls was kind of funny, but not the randomly-sniggering-a-week-later-when-thinking-about-a-joke kind of funny. Yeah, it hasn't been a week since I saw Easy A, but it's been like a half an hour and I just sniggered a bit at the scene in the bedroom with Olive and the gay kid. So I think it's safe to say that Easy A was pretty funny.

Olive is a girl with a flawless reputation - not by choice necessarily, though, she just hasn't had many opportunities to ruin it because boys don't notice her. Which is so unrealistic, because she's good-looking and unnaturally witty (I'll get to this later), but let's pretend it's totally believable and just go with this. Then, half-accidentally, a rumor begins to spread, which both puts a nasty stain on her reputation and makes her interesting. She doesn't mind, and the snowball begins to roll and turn into one big, nasty, promiscuous avalanche.

The protagonist of the movie is not your avarage high school comedy leading lady. Like I said, maybe not the most believable outcast, either, but I welcome the change. I'm not really in love with Emma Stone like the rest of the world seems to be, but I didn't find her or her character half as annoying as I'd imagine I might have! There was an inch too much Juno in her. And I like my high school comedies without a single inch of Juno, thank you very much. Still, Olive was pretty cool. Maybe it's the overflowing wit that nags me a bit. But I still won't get into it. (Oh, the anticipation! I'm such a tease.) Still, see the Pocket Full of Sunshine scene to see that she really is quite funny, and even by herself.

So Olive was pretty funny by herself, but the funniest moments were those with her interacting with the various, more or less geniusly hilarious supporting characters. I've already mentioned the gay kid, who, besides making me laugh aloud in that bedroom scene, was kind of sweet and made me go aww once or twice. Amanda Bynes rocked the role of the annoying girl determined to save Olive's eternal soul. Thomas Haden Church cracked me up both in the movie and in the gag reel. The Gossip Girl dude didn't annoy me, though I expected him to because of the association to said TV series. Then there were Pheobe and the sad, sick lady from Green Mile.

And last but not least Stanley Tucci, who deserves his own paragraph, because I don't remember anyone being so fabulously ridiculous in a long, long time. He plays Olive's father and the sad, sick lady from Green Mile plays her mother and I loved every scene with the parents. They're just ridiculously awesome. And Tucci's "Where are you from originally?" and "After we watch The Bucket List, remember to cross 'watch The Bucket List' off our bucket list" and a million other lines I could quote here, but I'll refrain myself.

... But I guess that's where Olive gets her ingenius wit from. I love witty movies and witty people, but at times when watching Easy A I was almost bothered by the incredible wittiness - of Olive, in particular. Which kind of doesn't make sense, because the wittier she is, the better for me, as a viewer of the movie. I guess there are such enormously witty 17-year-olds, but I haven't just met any, so it felt unrealistic to me. Or maybe I'm just jealous because I'll never be that witty and awesome or have such witty and awesome conversations with other witty and awesome people. Boohoo. But seriously, never mind it being slightly unrealistic, it was nice to see a kid having a perfectly functional and totally awesome relationship to her parents in a high school movie. First time for everything, I guess.

Because this has been quite a miscellaneous post with lots of random thoughts in a nice little mess, I'll finnish accordingly by saying that I loved all the references to John Hughes movies. And didn't I feel smart (knowing that a couple of months ago those bit wouldn't have meant anything to me. Haha).

"There's a higher power that will judge you for your indecency."
"Tom Cruise?"