And here we are again, this week we are sitting down to view our 195th film! Not long now until the 200th, we'll have to have a Tuesday Night is Film Night anniversary party!
This week's film is back to the comedy, albeit with a romantic teen movie slant, but will it be top marks or bottom of the class for;
Easy A
We saw this one on the TV schedules and added it to the planner just a couple of days ago, so we only knew it's content from the brief synopsis on the EPG. However, we were pleasantly surprised.
Firstly lets take the obligatory spin around the cast. Easy A focuses on Olive Penderghast played by the absolutely lovely Emma Stone, you may know her from such films as; The House Bunny and Friends With Benefits. Olive's best friend is Rhiannon (Aly Michalka) who helps to start the story. Along the way Olive is aided and abetted by her parents; Rosemary and Dill Penderghast; Patricia Clarkson (Friends With Benefits and Lars and the Real Girl) and Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones and The Terminal) respectively, who manage to act everybody else off the screen and we enjoy some absolute fantastic interplay between Penderghast family.
Olive also, as you will see, has a number of male contemporaries, possible too numerous to list here but please avail yourselves of the IMDB link below to get a full listing.
Lisa Kudrow also makes an appearance and although not a real favourite here at TNiFN Towers, we were delighted by her contribution and how funny she was playing the slightly wayward School Guidance Counsellor.
Right, enough of who was in it, what was it all about? Well, it follows the basic premise of how a lie, led to a small favour, which led to a big rumour which then perpetuated and snowballed into a huge heap of trouble for young Olive. It starts when Olive lies to her best friend Rhiannon to get out of a camping trip with Rhiannon and her parents. Olive says she has a date for the weekend. However, come Monday Rhiannon wants all the dirt about Olive's so called date and not content with just saying the date went well, Olive embellishes the story so much she admits to losing her virginity. Which of course is just not true, she actually spent the weekend painting her dog's toe nails as well as some other mundanities, but the damage is done, the lie hath been spoken.
So Olive has made her bed and she must lie on it, or not as the case maybe. Of course being in a High School the gossip spreads like wild fire or to use Olive's words; "The Accelerated Velocity of Terminological Inexactitude".
And at this point let us pause for a moment and consider the dialogue in the film, it is sublime, the writing and the narration is brilliant. Hats off to writer Bert V. Royal, some of the lines are just superlative, as mentioned previously the interplay with Olive and her parents is without doubt some very fine work, but also consider the story, it's fairly rudimentary in its content but it delivers a massive hook to pull you in. Fine work indeed.
Back to the plot, so after the lie comes the favour; gay friend of Olive; Brandon is privy to Olive's fabrication and he wants to play on Olive's notoriety to assist himself with the homophobic issues he is suffering at school. If Olive lie's about a "liaison" with Brandon, then Brandon will lose the gay tag and the subsequent beatings. Olive considers this and declines, until Brandon pours his heart out to her and all of a sudden the initial deceit turns into a double whammy of fiction and Olive's reputation takes a sleazy turn.
And there we have it Olive continues to perpetuate the myth and starts taking bribes and gratuities for not sleeping with other boys at the school, but just lying that she did. She clearly enjoyed helping boost the boys egos and the infamy it bought her and this roller coaster ride continued with Olive pretty much not sleeping with most of her peers, if you see what we mean, but as with all good things or in this case lies; it has to come to an end.
The last part of the film regales us with the reversal of Olive's deceit and how she unravels things so that she can return to a modicum of normality. How the story handles this is really pretty good and there is some fine work from Emma Stone as Olive, extrapolating her misdemeanors and turning the story around. Of course, we shall not be spoiling the plot by going through the minutiae detail here, needless to say; watch it and find out, you will not be disappointed.
The last part of the film regales us with the reversal of Olive's deceit and how she unravels things so that she can return to a modicum of normality. How the story handles this is really pretty good and there is some fine work from Emma Stone as Olive, extrapolating her misdemeanors and turning the story around. Of course, we shall not be spoiling the plot by going through the minutiae detail here, needless to say; watch it and find out, you will not be disappointed.
If we were to point out some negatives, it would only be that the brilliant dialogue in the first half of the film tends to tail off in the second half and although it is still entertaining, some of the killer lines were not so evident. Also the ending could be accused of being a tad cheesy, but as this is eluded to in the narrative we will let them off.
Easy A is the kind of film we like here at TNiFN Towers, it's a feelgood film, it's funny, it's touching and it ends happily for most.
A good one.
TNiFN Rating 83%
No comments:
Post a Comment