Many people summarily dismiss teenybopper movies as a genera, but there are great teenybopper movies, okay teenybopper movies, and bad teenybopper movies. Great teenybopper movies recreate the unique horror of the 1980s Generation-X high school experience, in all of it’s sadness, helplessness, vulnerability, and despair, and then turn everything around (half realistically, half dream-like) and make everything okay. They all follow this formula one way or another – from Clueless, to Ten Things I Hate About You, to Bring it On, to 13 Going on 30, to Freaky Friday, to Mean Girls, to Bandslam. Hell, even Juno followed this formula more or less.

I think the formula works because Generation-X was the last generation to grow up in a world without the internet (and everything that came with it or arrived on the scene concurrently.) There was a sense of isolation and naivete in the teenage adolescent experience that makes for great drama, and the fact that kids still did “normal kid things” back then (as opposed to constantly interfacing with electronic devices like fucking cyborgs) opens the possibility for dialog and plot-lines that have real texture. Even if these films are set in modern times, you will notice that the rhythm of life is very much Generation-X adolescence.

Easy A, on the other hand, is Exhibit A in the inevitable transition to Generation-Y teenybopper movies, and in my opinion it represents the worst possibilities of the genera. It has no soul. There’s not a scrap of genuine emotion or feeling in the thing. It is a glitzy, senseless piece of trash, rife with badly executed lowest common denominator humor. And on top of all that, it has bad music.

To say this film never finds its comic footing is something of an understatement. The film has no comic focus whatsoever. Its comic pacing is really poor – consider for example the “gay guy pretending to loose virginity” scene, which should have been much, much funnier and drags on way too long. The film also makes that increasingly common mistake of diffusing its comedy across every character, even the minor ones. Everyone is a fucking card in this film, none of them are funny, and each detracts from all the others.

But the film fails even more dramatically on the emotional front. The lead character’s story arc is completely unbelievable. She says she’s suffering but you never see it. She does not even look very upset at anything that is happening to her. She never cries (what kind of kid is she?!) She deals with adversity like a hardened battalion commander, never hesitating, always confident and effective. Any real outcast who went down a road like this would be irrevocably destroyed, trust me. She would be treated much worse than anything Stone experiences in the film, her family would probably be completely dysfunctional and unhelpful (like most outcasts,) she would not get the cool guy (who looks and sounds about 28 but is in high school,) and she would never be forgiven, by anyone.

This lead character (played by Emma Stone) is supposed to be a loser-type who is uniformly ignored at school, at least that’s what she tells you in her badly-written narration sequences. But what you actually see in the film is a brilliant girl who is effortlessly and dazzlingly articulate in every situation, who exudes a confidence and sexuality that defines the upper bound of “girl-next-door” sex appeal even before she turns tramp, who has an irresistible voice that can melt steel, and who has a fabulous and completely confident sense of fashion. How can you possibly connect with her or relate to her as an outcast?! First of all, every boy in the school would be openly pursuing this chick non-stop. Second, every girl in the school would be openly pursuing this chick non-stop. Third, all the UFOs in the sky would be landing in her backyard to try to optimally cross-mate species!

As for her best friend, Aly Michalka, there is no way in hell that a girl looking like that is going to be the the outcast best-friend of a completely ignored nobody. Think of Julia Stiles best friend in Ten Things I Hate About You (played by Susan May Pratt) if you can even remember the character. That is what the misfit, hippie best friend of an outcast looks and acts like, not some tricked-out blond bombshell with double-D tits. And by the way, since when does Aly Michalka have double-D tits? Just last year in Bandslam she looked perfectly normal. Very sad.

Stone’s family in this film is ridiculous. Their behavior is pointless and absurd and does nothing but detract from the already feeble storyline. Look, I like Patricia Clarkson as much as anyone, and Stanley Tuchi can be really wonderful when he takes on a warm, loving character. But to just let these two run amok in their scenes (which are many, and long, and painful) is just plain bad film-making. They are so overpowering they regularly eclipse the lead character. Not a good idea.

Then there’s the male heart-throb character: That dude from Gossip Girl is just not cut out for this kind of role. Yes, I know he’s ripped on steroids, with “guns” and “abs” like every other teenager in films, but he is just a cold, flat fish, devoid of any sex appeal or any appeal at all, actually. He is a disaster.

Lastly, the amount of on-screen time devoted to showing a time-lapsed representation of how rumors spread through the internet, super-phones, and the virtual ghettos of social networking, is really excessive. They keep coming back to this again and again, showing extended sequences, visually flying through the halls of the school like a video game, stopping here and there to show robo-children staring at electronic devices and seeing “things.” Very, very boring.

If you must watch Easy A, at least compare it to something like Bandslam to maintain perspective on the actual dramatic potential of this much maligned genera.