lightweight fare

The Thomas Crown Affair: (1968. dir: Norman Jewison) Featherweight story counting on its surface charms to pull it through: its soundtrack ("Windmills of my Mind", a massive hit at the time), its "edgy" editing style (Hal Ashby goes crazy with the geometrical shapes), and the magnitude of the individual charismas of and purported chemistry between its two megastars (McQueen and Dunaway). The chemistry is lacking, they largely left the charismas at home, the story is absurd, the editing style distracting, and most pop songs sound dated after forty some-odd years. Mostly you watch McQueen's playboy distract himself (gliders, dune buggies, polo, Sotheby's, pouting girls with foreign accents, arranging multi-million-dollar bank heists) and then enter into a pretty dull and unconvincing relationship with Dunaway's insurance sleuth (plagued by a costumer who must have hated her. Check out the continuing parade of terrible hats) who's trying to bring him to justice. Even my boyfriend, a big McQueen fan who felt genuine jealousy over that glider, said, "That might have been the most uninteresting movie I've ever seen."

The Curious Dr. Humpp: (1969. dir: Emilio Vieyra) Had Ed Wood and Russ Meyer collaborated, in Argentina, on a remake of Eyes Without a Face, using a budget of about twenty-five bucks and a case of beer, the result might have looked something like this.

Easy A: (2010. dir: Will Gluck) Comedy daunts me. For every good one you find, you have to slog through another fifteen that either suck or offer at best one or two laughs.

But here, at last, we have it! A well-written, well-acted, well thought out, unified comedy! Never having been a John Hughes fan back in the day, imagine my amazement to find such joy and satisfaction in the old high-school-coming-of-age comedy-package. In addition to being inspired by the Scarlet Letter, that compact yet tedious novel through which we all had to slog in school, Easy A is a kind of tribute to all those high school movies from the '80s, but it's so much better than they were. First of all, Emma Stone is so relaxed, un-vain and with such perfect timing that she could carry to success a far lesser script than this one. Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci (who must be married in real life, because it seems like they've made about a hundred movies together) are beyond perfect as her parents, and Penn Badgley (who?) is the exact fit to be that secret crush guy, the guy who's so cool that he's uncool, the one she'll end up with.

Also, as is so crucial in a high school comedy, the music is just about perfect.

Absolute thumbs up, with no reservations. It renews my faith in comedy, and not a moment too soon. I was about to give up.