Promiscuous Girl (Ish)

Emma Stone is major...like, major major, and Easy A is her starmaker.

The actress plays Olive Penderghast in this clever twist on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter about a girl, who tells a lie, and a lie that spreads like wildfire in – what else? – the eat-or-be-eaten world of high school.

Olive, she tells us herself from the get-go (as the movie’s narrative comes from a feature-long testimonial she’s webcasting), is not a remarkable girl.

No one at her East Ojai, Calif., school knows who she is.

In fact, she’s pretty much the consummate high school sock (you know, the kind of kid to whom no one pays attention), which is odd because she’s quite the radiant beauty, and as a redhead you’d think she’d be bound to stand out.

Alas, she doesn’t, and Easy A asks to go with it, and, by golly, we do because the movie’s smart and ironic and funny....

Anyway, about that lie.

Olive has this BFF, Rhiannon (Aly Michalka, whom CW fans are getting to know through Hellcats), who’s kinda always up in her beeswax about boys and whatnot. So one day, just to shut her up, Olive tells Rhi that she spent the weekend with a guy from junior college and cashed in her V chip.

The truth is she spent her time at home, playing with her dog, painting her nails, and dancing and singing to Natasha Bedingfield’s “Pocketful of Sunshine” like a big ol’ doof.

Rhi, of course, loves this salacious tidbit, and tells someone, who tells someone else, and pretty soon everyone at the school knows that Olive is no longer and virgin.

Some, mostly the boys, are all like, yeah about it, while others give her the stink eye, none more than the self-righteous religion freak Marianne (the hootlicious Amanda Bynes, taking a page from Mandy Moore’s character in Saved!).

At first, Olive is amused by the rumors and the silliness of it all, but then, when confronted with an opportunity to help a much-bullied gay satellite friend (Dan Byrd, from TV’s Cougar Town), she starts to see that there’s something about this lie that could work to her advantage.

So she decides to use the rumor mill to advance her social and financial standing, which, yes, sounds a little sketchy, but it also exposes the hyprocrisy of high school politics (the things that are said about this girl are outrageous, but she nevertheless walks the halls with her head held high, proud of the scarlett “A” she has sown on her clothes), a few skeletons, and a secret love Olive thought would go unrequited forever (hello, Penn Badgley!).

What I liked most about Easy A, other than the obvious (i.e., that it’s a tremendous showcase for the ebullient Stone), is it felt fresh, effortless, and whatever is the opposite of didactic.

That it features Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive’s just-too-cool parents is an added bonus.

My Rating ***1/2

Photo: Sony Pictures.