Easy A (2010)

Tags

Alyson Michalka, Amanda Bynes, Comedy, Dan Byrd, Easy A, Emma Stone, Lisa Kudrow, Movie, Patricia Clarkson, Penn Badgley, Romance, Stanley Tucci, Thomas Haden Church

look, honey, we're not always going to be there to carry the movie. at some point you're going to have to find some other interesting characters to hang out with...

PG-13

Emma Stone, Penn Badgley, Amanda Bynes, Dan Byrd, Thomas Haden Church, Patricia Clarkson, Stanley Tucci, Alyson Michalka, Lisa Kudrow

Random Guy: Hey Olive, how’s it going?
Olive: I’m swell…guy I’ve never talked to before.  Thanks for asking.

Olive (Stone) makes up a story about losing her virginity in order to shut up a friend who’s asking about it, not realizing that somebody else was listening to their conversation.  When this rumor spreads like wildfire, Olive embraces her new image as school tramp and even finds a way to make some money out of it.  Of course, things start to go too far, get out of control, etc, etc.

Okay, I have several problems with this movie.  Some are minor, nit-picky things, and others are larger, more important issues.

I’ll start with a couple nit-picky things.  First, if Olive is so invisible (which I find hard to believe in the first place) at school (as she states in the opening voice over), how is it that this rumor about her spreads so quickly to everyone?  I know if a similar thing had happened to me in school, most people’s reaction would be “who is this person, and why do I give a crap about their sex life??”  Yet, we see this rumor spreading around to people like they just found out Justin Bieber(yeah, I went there) is going to start attending their school.  It’s a California high school, nobody would care.  Maybe if it was middle school, then it would be more understandable, but…well…that would be a whole different kind of movie.

Second nit-picky thing: eighth grade Olive looks nothing like high school Olive.  How hard is it to find an actress that at least looks somewhat like Emma Stone?  Nobody shapeshifts that much between eighth grade and high school.

Now on to the bigger issues.  Why is it that the adult characters are so much more interesting than the high school kids.  Only Olive has any sort of intelligent dialogue written for her.  Everybody else is just a stereotype.  The dumb jocks, the ditzy blond, the nutty Christian kids, the put-upon gay character, and on and on.  Nothing nuanced here.

As I mentioned, though, the adult characters, specifically Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci as Olive’s parents, shine much brighter than anything else in this movie.  Every time they were on screen, my interest picked up.  I could have watched an entire movie about them and it would have been much much better than this one.

The other big issue:  I just didn’t find it that funny.

I like Emma Stone, and I think she can definitely carry a movie, but she deserves better than this.  There are a few funny moments outside of the scenes with the parents, but for the most part it’s just another shallow teen comedy going for easy laughs via cliches and low-brow humor (gee, a scene where two people go into a room and loudly pretend to have sex in order to trick people…how novel).

Check that all the stalls are empty before you start confessing things (whether true or not) in the bathroom.

10 – 2 for so many poorly written characters – 1 for too many unbelievable plot aspects – 1.5 because it’s just not that funny + .2 for Tucci and Clarkson = 5.7

Zombieland (2009)

Tags

Abigail Breslin, Action, Comedy, Emma Stone, Horror, Jesse Eisenberg, Movie, Woody Harrelson, Zombieland

Little Miss Zombieland

R

Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin

Columbus: Another rule to surviving Zombieland:  travel light.  And I don’t mean just luggage.  I’ve always been kind of a loner.  I avoided other people like they were zombies even before they were zombies.  Now that they are all zombies…I kinda miss people.

Columbus (Eisenberg) is a loner in a world with very few non-zombies left.  He meets Tallahassee (Harrelson) and hitches a ride, hoping to return to his home town to see if his family is still alive.  They have to fight off zombies along the way.

Let me start off by saying I’m not a huge fan of Eisenberg or Harrelson, or zombies for that matter, but they all were tolerable enough to not ruin this particular movie.  In fact, it’s a pretty good movie.  Not great, but entertaining.

I liked that they didn’t spend the whole movie with zombie attack after zombie attack and instead focused more on the characters and how they survive in this harsh reality.  Both Columbus and Tallahassee (not their real names, obviously, just their respective destinations) are reluctant to form any sort of attachments to other people, though eventually they pick up two more survivors, Wichita (Stone) and Little Rock (Breslin).  It takes a while, though, for them to all get over their trust issues.

Back to the survival stuff – I’m sure we’ve all contemplated the what-if-I-was-the-last-person-on-earth scenario before, right?  …right?  Okay, maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s interesting.  One thing I’ve thought about his how much of a person’s destructive nature would come out, and we see some of that in one scene in this movie when they just totally trash a store they’re in for no other reason than it’s fun.  I’d probably take it a step further and see if I could figure out how to operate an army tank.  It’s also kind of fun to think about how you can just take anything you see.  Want a new car?  Just hop in any one you find.  Though, I’m not real sure why they didn’t choose a more fuel efficient vehicle (rather than the Hum-V they get), seeing as how gasoline might be hard to come by at times.

But enough about all that.  Back to the movie.  It’s directed stylishly and with a lighthearted feel that balances out the gruesomeness of the zombie attacks.  Plus, it’s funny on a fairly consistent basis.  Eisenberg’s narration is something I could have done without, but it’s not too detrimental.  Also, with only 4 characters present, there’s really no threat of anything bad happening to any of them.  There’s no real sense of danger, but since this is a comedy essentially, I can let that pass.

While this isn’t destined to become a favorite, I think it could stand up well to the occasional repeated viewing.  Plus, it could be good training for the inevitable day when zombies take over…

Buckle up in case of a zombie attack.

10 – 1 because Eisenberg and Harrelson still annoy me a bit – 1 for some rough patches where the comedy just doesn’t work – .8 for a weak ending + .3 for that big cameo everybody loves = 7.5