Plot: Olive (Emma Stone) makes up a boyfriend and a sexual encounter to get out of a camping weekend. Someone overhears her excuse and soon the whole school thinks she sleeps around. Later she pretends to have sex with a gay friend to help him stay in the closet convincingly. Soon all the gay boys are pretending to have sex with her, and all the fundamentalists are trying to have her expelled. She takes to wearing a red "A" on her shirt like Hester Prin in the Scarlett Letter.
Review: This is a likeable movie with a sharp script, and a likeable star in Emma Stone. Everyone knows that this could not really happen, but it is so exaggerated to be funny. The word is farce -- it is not a regular romantic comedy.
Olive narrates the story which breaks up the action, but helps us understand Olive better. She is the only real character in the movie. All the other characters in the movie are carcatures, and there arn't any real friendship. Olive has a lonely life that is part of her appeal, and the irony is that everyone believes she has dozens of relationships.
I liked Olive's parents played by Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson. They provided comic diversion, and did most of the sex jokes. The teacher (Thomas Haden Church) and guidance counselor (Lisa Kudrow) were bigger than life, troubled personalities.
Cast: Emma Stone, Amanda Bynes, Stanley Tucci
Directed by: Will Gluck, written by Bert Royal
Rating: 3.0 flasks, too funny and clever to be any less. Not ambitious enough to be any more.
More: I liked the Huckleberry Finn joke. . . . I don't know anybody who runs away with a hulking black man . . .
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