Easy A

If something occurs but you don’t share it on Facebook, did it ever really happen? For a generation raised on the notion that you show your individuality by joining a group and your soul exists to be bared in a status update, Easy A could well be their profile page. It’s immature, painfully self-aware and lacking in substance, but proves that a lengthy friends’ list will be yours once you have some funny quotes, deliberately lenient privacy settings and a cute girl in your profile picture. 
And what a cute girl. Emma Stone plays Olive, the most unbelievable highschool-nobody since She’s All That proposed that Rachel Leigh Cook was ugly because she wore glasses. Charming, gorgeous and sarcastic, she’s somehow ignored by her peers until a rumour spreads that she has had sex. This is enough to spark the interest of the school’s male population and the outrage of a Christian group. Embracing her new reputation, Olive embarks on a business venture, pretending to sleep with the school outcasts in exchange for money. As is the way, the boys are made legend, Olive is made slut, redemption is earned through a sincere speech and all live happily ever after. Or do they?
Stone is a delight, Stanley Tucci is scene-stealing as her wise-cracking father, and there are some fantastic one-liners. But the overall plot is a mess of tired clichés, stupid characters and confused messages about sexuality and acceptance. Olive starts out as a confident girl, self-assuredly at odds with her peers. She mocks their judgment of her sex life by emblazoning a scarlet ‘A’ on her chest in a nod to the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel her class is reading. However, by the film’s end we see her begging to be readmitted to the social group that vilified her. Her wish is granted not because she asserts her right to individuality, but because she reveals that she is in fact still a virgin and, thus, worthy of respect.