EXPECTATIONS: I'm a pretty huge sucker for some teen comedy angsty crap, but this looks like it might offer more than you're average date flick time killer. Also, Emma Stone was great in The House Bunny. She was pretty much the only great thing about it.
REALITY: If John Hughes was still alive and making teen movies they would probably look a lot like this. It seems that the film makers have taken the quirky 'being smart is cool' angle of Juno (which is a film that sucked so hard. Yes it did), the bitchy school humour of Mean Girls (which was fantastic) and mixed it all together with some Hughes-y emotional 'awww' stuff. They all mix together well to make a great film.
Stone plays Olive, a nice smart kid who is fairly invisible amongst her fellow students. One of her male friends is gay and being bullied because of it, so in order to get through high school with the least amount of negative attention Olive agrees to help him out. The two go to a party acting completely wasted, find a bedroom and make loud noises as if they are having sex. This works well for the gay kid, but Olive is now looked upon as a slut. She begins to perform this charitable act for others and things get out of hand.
Emma Stone is extremely easy to watch and funny. If she wasn't this movie would be a huge failure, because we are pretty much with her for the entire duration. The casting is fantastic, with Patricia Clarkson as her mother, Thomas Hayden Church as her cool sarcastic English teacher, and Lisa Kudrow as her guidance counselor.
On occasional there are moments that teeter on the edge of being too quirky and annoying, but I think the film manages to keep it on the edge of being likable and not taking it all too far.
This was solid.
****
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