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

Smart People (2008)

Tags

Comedy, Dennis Quaid, Drama, Ellen Page, Movie, Romance, Sarah Jessica Parker, Smart People, Thomas Haden Church

just...people...

R

Dennis Quaid, Thomas Haden Church, Ellen Page, Sarah Jessica Parker

Vanessa: What’s it like to be stupid?
Other girl: What’s it like sitting by yourself at lunch every day?
Vanessa: …It sucks…

Lawrence (Quaid) is a professor who has had to raise two kids alone after his wife passed away.  He is not at all good at interacting with other people due to his pompous, superior attitude, which he has passed down to his daughter Vanessa (Page).  When he suffers a head injury and isn’t allowed to drive himself anywhere, Lawrence’s adopted brother Chuck (Church) moves in and becomes his personal driver.  In the meantime, Lawrence has started to date Janet (Parker), which does not please Vanessa.

A ways into this movie I was thinking it should be called Annoying People, or maybe Miserable People.  There’s a lot of unhappiness on display, and there doesn’t seem to be any real reason for it other than the characters are jerks to each other.  You could assume it’s a family broken by the loss of their wife/mother years ago, but that doesn’t really seem to be explored as the cause.

Thomas Haden Church’s character enters into the scene and seems more likable, but really he’s an irresponsible slacker who forgets appointments to pick up his brother and gives his 17 year old niece pot and alcohol.  Yay.

Also, this movie feels like somebody read the Indie Movie Handbook and followed it step by step.  The characters, the situations, the nearly constant acoustic guitar music punctuating almost every scene.  It all seems a little forced.

For a movie called Smart People, they don’t seem to treat the audience like they’re very smart.  There’s a lot of hand-holding going on.  Making sure we have the back story spelled out, making sure we get why Vanessa is jealous of Janet, etc.  Sometimes it’s good to have a little mystery in your characters actions.

That’s not to say there aren’t bright spots.  The actors all do a good job with their characters, and there are some genuinely funny moments.  It’s not a hard movie to suffer through, it’s just a little predictable, and with the characters not being very likable, I found myself not being too interested in the outcome.

10 – 3 for characters I didn’t care much about – .5 for being predictable – .4 for dull soundtrack = 6.1