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Easy A stays Emma Stone as Olive, a college student who’s thought of being an easy lay after she lies about a date on which she never went.
Not only that, but she claims she also lost her virginity to this mythical hunk called George in order to get out of a weekend away with her friend Rhiannon (Aly Michalka) and her completely off-the-wall hippy parents, but then embelished how wonderful it was when she was asked on her friend’s return. Of course, she could’ve said it was terrible and she bailed early from the date… but then we’d have a very short film.
Things progress from there with her later allowing gay friend Brandon (Dan Byrd) to say she slept with him at the house of Melody Bostic, the most popular girl in school who holds regular mega-parties. At the same time, she fancies another guy, Woodchuck Todd (Penn Badgley) and you just know those two are destined for each other, at which point things begin to get out of hand.
Throw in best friend Rhiannon (Aly Michalka), school bitch Marianne (Amanda Bynes) and some neat supporting performances from Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive’s parents and Sideways‘ Thomas Haden Church as her teacher, plus a brief turn from Malcolm McDowell as the school principal and you have a film that starts out well but tails off and gets a bit tired as it goes on. However, it does have some nice homages to classic ’80s John Hughes movies later on.
There’s some amusing writing in Olive’s voiceover, such as when the rumour spreads about her losing her virginity after it’s spread around by Christian bitch Marianne, and that now she’s thought of as a tramp, Olive is heard thinking, “I’m gonna have to get a lower-back tattoo and pierce something NOT on my face.”(!)
Also, it features some very interesting opening credits with the names of the cast scattered about the campus as the camera winds its way towards Emma Stone while she narrates. The closing ones are also nicely done, too.
Presented in the original 1.85:1 theatrical ratio and in 1080p high definition, the picture is sharp and nicely detailed, with no issues whatsoever, but never really feels like it’s pushing the boat out given the content of the film itself. For the record, I’m watching on a Panasonic 37″ Plasma screen via a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player.
The sound is in 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, for which I got the 5.1 DTS version, but it’s mostly used for dialogue and music. There’s nothing wrong with it, but, like the picture, there’s nothing that really stands out. It’s not a demo disc, basically.
The extras are as follows (those with ‘*’ at the end are Blu-ray exclusives):
- The Making of Easy A* (14:35): Will Gluck and Emma Stone talk about the film coming together, including her post-audition webcam… ‘audition’, when the director wanted those up for the job to send him a video of them talking into a webcam which makes up a series of key moment in the film to divide it up. It’s a reasonable puff-piece for the film with soundbites from all the other key cast members too.
- Vocabularity of Hilarity* (5:01): The cast members try to spell ‘chlamydia’ before mentioning all the other examples of teen dialogue spread liberally throughout the film, such as ‘virginity’ being referred to as ‘V-card’.
- The School of Pop Culture: Movies of the Eighties* (5:08): A brief segment about the numerous reference of the films of that era.
- Gag Reel (5:21): 5 minutes of goofs, gaffes and corpsing.
- Emma Stone: Audition Footage (19:19): Five segments, starting with the aforementioned webcam audition which convinced Will Gluck to cast her, plus five more conventional audition pieces.
- Trailers: Oddly, rather than bring up a selection of separate trailers to click on, they all follow one into another which is incredibly irritating. First up is a general Sony Blu-ray trailer, then movie trailers for Burlesque, Grown Ups, The Other Guys, The Green Hornet and The Social Network.
I can’t see any reason why Sony have done this, as the menu system worked perfectly fine, for example, when it came to selecting the individual parts of Emma Stone’s audition.
Audio commentary: with Emma Stone and director Will Gluck.
Extra Credit: Pop-Up Trivia Track*: A feature-length extra that does what it says on the tin.
The menu features clips from the film set against cartoon images of Emma Stone and various items from the film. There are subtitles in English, Spanish and Hindi and the total number of chapters is the usual 16 for Sony. That’s not too bad with a film that’s only 90 minutes or so in length, but a few more wouldn’t hurt.
Easy A is out now on Blu-ray and DVD.
|
FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
6 8 7 5 |
| OVERALL | 6 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 92 minutes
Year: 2010
Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Cat no: SBR63141
Released: February 2011
Chapters: 16
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: English, Spanish, Catalan
Subtitles: English, Hindi, Spanish
Widescreen: 1.85:1
Disc Format: BD50
Director: Will Gluck
Producers: Zanne Devine and Will Gluck
Screenplay: Bert V Royal
Music: Brad Segal
Cast:
Olive: Emma Stone
Woodchuck Todd: Penn Badgley
Marianne: Amanda Bynes
Brandon: Dan Byrd
Mr. Griffith: Thomas Haden Church
Rhiannon: Aly Michalka
Rosemary: Patricia Clarkson
Dill: Stanley Tucci
Micah: Cam Gigandet
Mrs. Griffith: Lisa Kudrow
Principal Gibbons: Malcolm McDowell
Pastor: Fred Armisen
Nina: Mahaley Hessam
Evan: Jameson Moss
Kennedy Peters-Booth: Blake Hood
Chip: Bryce Clyde Jenkins
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.