Easy A

Easy A

There is no real reason I should have enjoyed Easy A as much as I did.  It is a teen comedy, the likes of which I usually tend to avoid.  But if nothing else, I suppose Easy A should teach us a very important lesson: casting can be everything.

Emma Stone (The Help) plays Olive, a slightly nerdy and quiet high school student.  In order to get out of hanging out with her best friend's weird family, she lies about going out on a date with a college kid.  The next day, she then also lies about sleeping with that college kid just to get her friend off her back.  As I am sure we all painfully remember, news travels like wild fire in high school, and Olive is quickly branded as a slut.  Coincidentally, they are reading "The Scarlet Letter" in English class, and Olive is inspired.  Though she is not quite ostracized the same way Hester Prynne is in the classic novel, Olive still faces a similar social stigma and begins to ironically wear a scarlet A on her outfits, just to mess with people.  This...just kind of makes things worse.  Lies continue to spiral out of control and beyond anything that Olive can manage.  Hilarity ensues.

As I mentioned, the key to Easy A's success is the cast.  Emma Stone is fiery, biting, and quirky (without using the quirkiness as a gimmick) and she absolutely carries the film.  The rest of the cast is equally good.  Her very peculiar parents are played by seasoned pros Stanley Tucci (The Devil Wears Prada) and Patricia Clarkson (Pieces of April), and this pair tends to steal many of the scenes they are in.  The school's personnel includes Thomas Haden Church (Sideways) as her English teacher, Lisa Kudrow (Friends) as her counselor, and good ol' Malcolm McDowall (Clockwork Orange) as the principal. The fellow students, often the weak link in these movies, all put in pretty funny performances, especially the love interest played by Penn Badgley, who shows way more charm and comic timing here than he ever has on that piece of crap Gossip Girl show he stars in (I HATE THAT SHOW).

The movie does have some issues.  Sometimes the script is a little too clever for its own good, calling attention to its own strangeness.  This can get distracting in some scenes, especially the ones without Stone, who manages to make all of her odd lines completely believable.  Another thing that bothered me is that they resort to the stock, judgmental and overly religious group as the high school bad guys.  I understand that judgmental and hypocritical prudes are a huge part of "The Scarlet Letter," so I get what they are trying to do.  But I don't think it works as presented here.  And with all the entertaining characters floating around everywhere else, I wish they had been more creative here than just resorting to the old cardboard cutouts.  Basically, in all these high school movies, if you are religious at all, you're automatically bad, and that annoys me.  Sometimes this type of character works really well (like Mandy Moore in 2004's Saved), but here it is just a bothersome cliche.    

Anyway, that is really a small complaint in what is otherwise a very entertaining film.  I would absolutely check it out if you get a chance.  It may surprise you!  

MVP:

No doubt in my mind.  Emma Stone, for sure.  Of the young actors moving up the ladder these days, she might be my favorite.  She has terrific comic timing and is able to equally sell edgy and nerdy.  In the case of Easy A, she takes a movie that might have been merely amusing and lifts it into something way more entertaining (and picking up a well-deserved Golden Globe nomination in the process).  With Crazy Stupid Love and The Help, this has been a great year for her, and I think her star is just gonna keep rising.  

BEST LINE:

Mom: No judgement, but you kind of look like a stripper.
Olive: Mom!!!
Dad (trying to calm her down): A high end stripper, for governors or athletes. 

TRIVIA:

All the members of Olive's family are named after food.  Her parents are Dill and Rosemary.  Her brothers are Chip and Kale.  That is, uh, odd.  But interesting.

No Reservations

No Reservations

Modern day romantic comedies generally aren't my thing. Which is funny, because I love old school romantic comedies. But the best days of the genre, along with its best stars - Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Audrey Hepburn, Irene Dunne - are gone. Now, all romantic comedies are the same and follow the same well-worn path. What separates the good from the bad is always your team (obviously). If you get a good director, a decent writer and a fun cast with some chemistry - well, then the formula isn't a bad thing. The problem is, the best and brightest talents in Hollywood are rarely interested in this genre anymore.

So when I saw the pedigree for No Reservations, I actually thought it might be something. The director is Scott Hicks, the Australian auteur behind Shine. The cast includes actors who don't normally make these kinds of movies - when is the last time Catherine Zeta Jones, Aaron Eckhart, and Patricia Clarkson were in a movie like this? Even the composer was unusual for this type of project- classical composer Philip Glass who ventures into movies rarely and when he does, it is for indie films or esoteric documentaries. Plus, No Reservations was based on a German comedy called Mostly Martha, which was supposed to be terrific. This all made me very curious.

Kate (Catherine Zeta Jones) is a uptight chef in an expensive restaurant owned by Paula (Patricia Clarkson). She is a brilliant chef, but a bit ornery, and she has a habit of insulting guests who don't like her food. In an effort to force Kate to deal with her temper, Paula forces her to go to therapy (the therapist is played by Bob Balaban). When her sister is killed in a car accident, Kate adopts her niece Zoe (Abigail Breslin) and is forced to change her strictly regimented life. To make life more stressful, Paula has hired a new sous chef for the restaurant, the free-wheeling, opera-singing, self-trained Nick (Aaron Eckhart). Kate and Nick are complete opposites and the tension begins almost immediately. And....I think we can all see where this is going.

Unfortunately, the esteemed cast and crew of No Reservations are unable to lift the film past its own blandness. Oh, the cast does its job. They are all pleasant and professional, if unremarkable. Zeta Jones and Eckhart go through the motions gamely enough, though they lack any sort of chemistry whatsoever. They are clearly falling in love because the script is telling them to. But they aren't really bad. They're just there. The best performance easily comes from little Abigail Breslin. It's a shame that her character is basically wasted - she is just a chess piece designed to bring Nick and Kate together. The most interesting story element is Zoe dealing with the traumatic death of her mother; more time should have been spent on this and less on the goofy verbal sparring between Kate and Nick.

The other creative partner that rises to the occasion is Philip Glass. What is he doing scoring this film? Did he lose a bet? It's so odd. That said, he rises to the occasion, writing an alternately bouncy and emotional score that somehow both adheres to genre rules while still keeping to his minimalistic cyclical style. Go him.

As for the rest of the movie, there is nothing really bad I can say about it. The problem is, there is nothing really good I can say about it, either. It is almost entirely forgettable. It's good to watch when you can't sleep one night and you happen to catch it. And don't worry if you start the film halfway in. You haven't missed anything because you've seen it all before.

MVP: I'm going with Breslin, who acts circles around her older, more established co-stars. She brings three-dimensions to her character. If the whole film had been about her dealing with the death of her mother, it could have been a winner. With her limited screen time, Breslin rises to the occasion and in the processes, rises her character out of mediocrity. When she is told about her mother's death, her reaction was gut-wrenching. It's one of the few times I felt any sort of emotion - good or bad- in the movie. Breslin's the real deal. I see Oscars in her future.

BEST LINE: Nick: "Get your hands off my tupperware."

TRIVIA: In a subtle bit of product placement, the characters all gush over an Australian wine from Yacca Paddock Wineries. These wineries are actually owned by Scott Hicks, the director. Clever.