Easy A (Will Gluck) - 2010

Emma Stone is excellent as the narrator and lead for this high school film about reputations and rumors with a loose association to literary classics The Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn.  There is way too much angst and stereotyping here but the movie is well-paced and cleverly-written.  Emma's liberal parents played by Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci are a welcome relief from the stodgy parental types that usually dwell in such movies.  I liked the English teacher played by Thomas Haden Church but Lisa Kudrow seemed to be misplaced as his unfaithful guidance-counselor spouse.  Although the girls, including Amanda Bynes and Alyson Michalka, are much more mature than the high school girls I remember, there is no attempt to recreate the reality of the high school experience in Ojai, California.  [JAM 5/15/2011]