Easy A

With a bigger budget and a sharper sense of direction, Easy A could have been a terrific teen-angst dark comedy, along the lines of another modernized adaptation, 10 Things I Hate About You. That film updates Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, and this is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter set in a California high school. But it isn’t teen sex that causes Olive Pendergast (Emma Stone) to wear the shameful brand; instead, it’s the rumor of sex, and the rumor of more sex, and more sex, and so on. Stone (Zombieland) has a very bright future and is squarely in control here, although Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson, as her parents, try to steal their share of scenes. The dialogue in Easy A is well-crafted and sarcastic, helping to punch up a bland story and Will Gluck’s stiff directorial style.