Easy A Review

I feel like I was one of the few students in my class that didn’t hate The Scarlet Letter, but boy-howdy, it wasn’t exactly entertaining either. So, Easy A, which isn’t quite an adaptation and isn’t quite divorced from the book either didn’t immediately appeal to me when it first came out. But when I finally got around to watching it, I found a pretty charming little film with an interesting approach to adapting Hawthorne’s thoroughly un-fun novel into a very entertaining coming-of-age film.

So, quick recap for the uninitiated: The Scarlet Letter is about Hester Prynne (which rhymes with “Sin,” and that’s on purpose) living as an outcast in Puritan society because of her daughter Pearl, who was conceived outside of wedlock in a secret affair with the minister Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester’s punishment is public shaming and being forced to wear a scarlet letter A for adulterer. Conflict ensues. Eventually the truth comes out and literally kills a guy. Quite a book.

Easy A follows Olive Penderghast, a shy girl in high school who lies about losing her virginity and becomes an immediate nexus of gossip and slut-shaming. Olive decides to take charge of the narrative and help a closeted friend by pretending to sleep with him at a party, and then allowing another boy to lie about feeling her up for a gift card, and so on and so on… Conflict ensues.

What’s great about the movie, aside from Emma Stone’s snarky performance, and tight script, is that it provides a surprisingly nuanced take on the stigmas around sex, particularly for young women. Any boy who lies about a relationship with Olive is catapulted to new levels of cool, even with the girls looking down on Olive for being “easy.” Despite Olive’s best attempts to not be hurt by the rumors and own her infamy (by plastering her outfits with scarlet “A’s”), the fallout is inevitably harmful, and of course, unfounded. But when Olive approaches the idea of a physical relationship with a long time crush at the end of the film she makes it plain, in emphatic fashion, that it’s no one else’s business who she sleeps with.

If I have to ding this movie for one thing, it’s of a particularly backwards and one-dimensional depiction of the only Indian character: a stereotypical nerd interested in lying about sleeping with Olive, offering her coupons in exchange, and later being brought back for a single line to show that he didn’t empathize with Olive’s story at any point. The movie’s from 2010, but that depiction for the only Indian character would have been “yikes” back in the 80’s.  

But, then again, this movie also gave us Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as two of the funniest Teen-movie parents of all time, so they got something right. I think this movie is still capable of sparking good discussions about how we perceive people, our unspoken double-standards, and where shame really comes from, and that alone makes it worth your time. Stanley Tucci’s just a delightful bonus.

4 Scarlet Letters out of 5. Streaming now on Netflix.