This high school comedy was inspired by THE SCARLET LETTER. It's certainly not surprising to see a classic being adapted for modern teens. What is surprising is that it took this long for Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic to be given this kind of teen treatment. The best surprise is how funny and smartly it was done.
Olive (Emma Stone, SUPERBAD) tells an innocent lie, which gets her in a great deal of indecent trouble. She wants to avoid a weekend away with her best friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka, TV's PHIL OF THE FUTURE) and her crazy hippie parents, so she tells her that she has a date with a college guy. When Rhiannon asks her about the date on Monday, she ends up getting trapped into admitting that she lost her virginity to cover up her weekend in her room singing greeting card songs. As these things go, the news travels fast and Olive develops a new reputation quick.
Some of the school's Jesus freaks, led by Marianne (Amanda Bynes, TV's THE AMANDA SHOW), start giving her a hard time and she gives them a piece of her mind, which lands her in detention. While scrubbing the school from top to bottom, she meets Brandon (Dan Byrd, THE HILLS HAVE EYES), who is getting beat up on a regular basis for being gay. They discuss their reps and he learns that Olive's is based on a lie. He comes up with an ingenious plan to fake a hook-up between the two so he'll be saved a pummeling. The plan works wonders for him, but has the opposite effect for Olive. Seems there are a lot of boys in school who need help with their reps and are willing to pay. For a good girl like Olive, she can't say no to a person in need.
Stone received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance. She is beautiful and charming and witty. Her character takes her trampy reputation and runs with it just to screw with the minds of the rest of the student body who don't really know her. She even goes as far as wearing modified lingerie with a big red A sowed on. But soon the negative effects start to mount up and it's hard to take any of it back. Worst of all it could seriously hurt her chances of dating the nice guy Todd (Penn Badgley, TV's GOSSIP GIRLS).
There are adults in this tale as well. Olive's parents Rosemary (Patricia Clarkson, PIECES OF APRIL) and Dill (Stanley Tucci, THE LOVELY BONES) are the coolest parents anyone could hope for. Their reasonable about Olive's changes, but best of all they trust her to make the right decisions in the end. There are also teachers. Mr. Griffith (Thomas Haden Church, SIDEWAYS) is the coolest teacher anyone could hope for. He's married to the guidance counselor (Lisa Kudrow, TV's FRIENDS), who is about as gossipy as Marianne and her self-righteous saints.
Directed Will Gluck and scripted by Bert V. Royal, the film references John Hughes and other '80s teen comedies and it captures some of the same sentimentality. It's like a cross between SIXTEEN CANDLES and CAN'T BUY ME LOVE. Like the best of Hughes' work, the film understands the landscape of high school and how rumors grow and the double standard toward girls and boys when it comes to sex. It even finds a way to work in a random musical number.
Driven by Stone's great screen presence, the film is a lot of fun. I liked her character, because I understood the difficult predicament she got herself into. A lot of it was her fault, (she's a little too ironic for her own good), but some of it was out of her control. It started with one innocent little lie, but she had to cover the first lie with another and then another. Isn't that the way it always is? And before too long everyone thinks you'll sleep with any nerd with a gift card to the Home Depot.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
