Jon's take on Easy A

Easy A is supposed to be a throw back to the great John  Hughes movies of the 80s.  It stars Emma Stone, Stanley Tucci, Patricia Clarkson, Amanda Bynes (in her "supposedly last" film), Thomas Haden Church, Lisa Kudrow, Penn Badgley, Alyson Michalka (no, I've never heard of her either) and Dan Bird.
  The film had a lot of problems for me.  First off, I was told this was supposed to be a film that was in the style of a John Hughes movie, but instead, it reference John Hughes directly once, mimics him and then POINTS out that it mimiced him.  There is a nice montage of his films in the movie, though that felt a little out of place.
  As the story begins, we meet Olive (Stone) who lies to her friend Rhiannon (Michalka) and tells her she lost her v-card to a college student.  Their conversation is overheard and quickly spreads through the school.  Well, she tells a friend of hers, Brandon (Bird), that it wasn't true.  He asks her if she will pretend that she slept with him to prevent the guys at school from picking on him.  He figures if he says he had sex with her, the guys will take him in and respect him, since currently he is their punching bag.  This will get worse as word spreads about what she supposedly did for him and lots of guys start to pay her if she will lie to them.  Meanwhile, in class, Church plays her favorite teacher, Mr. Griffith, who is having the class read the Scarlet Letter, so Olive sews an A to her clothes and plays up the part of a tramp, not really funny to me.
  Olive's parents, Tucci and Clarkson, are brilliant as her parents, and her support system.  She has a little brother who is adopted and together, the four of them have some very funny conversations.  "You are only related to me through marriage!" Olive says to her father.  I wish the film had been about their home life, then I would have really liked it.
  As Olive's life starts to unravel, she has runins with various people, Kudrow as the wife of Mr. Griffith and an advice councellor is a  complete waste.  She has to contend with Marianne (Bynes) as the leader of a crazed Christian group who are angry at her for her blatant display of immorality.  Marianne is shown as completely nuts and so are all her little minions.  Malcolm McDowells shows up for all of about 5 mins as the school principal.  And then there is the requisite hero, Woodchuck Todd (Badgley) who is spoken of at the beginning of the movie, then swoops in conveniently in the last 10 minutes to help our heroine fix her problem just in time for the credits to roll.
  I did like how the end of the movie worked, that was actually pretty clever, however, it did feel a little forced as the first hour and 20 is showing how the lie is destroying her life, the last 10 implies that all that damage can be fixed that easily.  What?  You've gotta be kidding me, even Full House took longer to resolve issues!
   So, I did like some of the humor of the film, but most of it fell flat for me and I only occasionally smiled and twice laughed out loud.  Her first scene with Brandon is classic and anytime Tucci and Clarkson were on screen, I perked up.  However, the blatant immorality that ran through this and the mockery of Christians without at least one sane one to show up was annoying.  That aside, this was no John Hughes movie, more like a "let's pay tribute to him by making random references to him" type of movie.
  Does this film deserve a PG-13 rating?  Absolutely not.  This should have been R.  It contains a lot of language.  Lisa Kudrow is jaw droppingly vulgar in one scene and anytime Alyson pops up, the filmmakers seemed to think it was funny for her to call everyone, "B*tch".  Not funny.  Also, there is quite a heavy amount of sex-related dialogue as that is what this movie is all about.
  As to whether this film is any good?  If you are a fan of Emma Stone (I am), rent it.  Or if you want to watch Tucci and Clarkson work their magic.  Just don't get your hopes up cause this isn't that great.  1 1/2 out of 4 gold bricks for the "eh" Easy A.