Three things in Hollywood will never go out of fashion: Comedies about losing virginity, setting literary classics in high school and 20-something actors playing teenagers. So it's probably a good thing for Easy A that it has all of these things in excess. And that it's also the first opportunity at a leading role for Movieline favorite Emma Stone doesn't hurt either, just so long as your tolerance for Tom Cruise jokes hasn't waned since 2007.
Stone plays Olive, a high school nobody -- suspend disbelief... now -- who helps her tormented gay friend by pretending to have wild sex with him at a party. Never mind the sad undertones of this, just roll with it -- it's teen comedy! Anyway, after word gets around, the school's virginal population starts propositioning her and a cottage industry is born: Olive charges geeks for the opportunity to pretend lose their virginity.
The second half of the trailer introduces some Scarlett Letter parallels -- hence the title -- though if memory serves, Hester Prynne didn't charge people to say they slept with her. There's also Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci in the mom and dad roles; Thomas Haden Church and Lisa Kudrow as the stuffy school administrators who realize something is wrong and probably wind up sleeping together too; and Gossip Girl star Penn Badgley doing his best Dan Humphrey. It all looks perfectly generic -- that it's from the director of Fired Up is a tip off -- but Stone is charm squared and that's really all the trailer is selling. And, frankly, that could be enough.
VERDICT: Maybe.
Easy A
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