If you are a man or woman of a certain age — middle age, specifically — then you more than like have some familiarity with and affinity for the ’80s films of writer/director John Hughes. Movies like The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off absolutely dazzled young audiences with the way they captured the teen experience, or at least the teen experience they wished they were having, and have rightly gone down as contemporary classics. Let’s all pretend that Weird Science never happened, though.
I don’t know what John Hughes’ secret was, but he had a perfect ear for the interactions between teenagers. Sure, these teenagers were all cleverer and more insightful than fully ninety percent of the target audience, but the characters in Hughes’ films spoke to larger truths and identification was therefore easy and total. I have seen The Breakfast Club easily a dozen times, and still enjoy it as an adult, largely because it brings me back to a time when I was young and dumb and thought the social minefield of high school was the most important thing in the world. As I say above, I am not alone.
Easy A is not a film from the ’80s, but it is a love letter to those John Hughes films in pretty much every way possible. I’ve never heard of screenwriter Bert Royal — and he’s apparently done no movies since Easy A, so I don’t know what’s going on there — and I’ve never heard of director Will Gluck, though he did go on to direct the notorious bomb, Friends with Benefits, featuring Justin Timberlake. But despite the fact that these men are and were essentially anonymous to me, their creation is a lovely, effervescent concoction in the Hughes mold and it is delightful viewing.
A word of warning: if you’re somehow devoid of a soul and don’t like John Hughes movies, avoid Easy A at all costs. In fact, you may as well stop reading this review now.
