Rating: 4/5
Anyone who went to high school will remember the holy grail of cool - and that there's nothing less cool than trying to be. Little wonder, then, that when Olive (Emma Stone) is overheard pretending she's slept with a college guy - and lets the rumour spread - her attempt to attain coolness backfires. She's called tart, tramp, temptress, trollop - and that's just on the film poster, where she holds up this note: "The rumour-filled totally FALSE account of how I RUINED MY flawless reputation."
As Olive recaps events in her video diary, we see how "lie leads to lie, like setting up Jenga". After she fakes sex with a gay friend (so the homophobes will lay off him), the gay, the fat and the nerdy start pleading with her to pretend she has slept with them, too. She agrees, more out of sympathy than for their cash/discount vouchers.
Ostracised, Olive reckons she might as well ham it up in slutty outfits - but this is no victim, just a girl pulling the finger at the high-school hierarchy and the puritanical propaganda perpetuated by the likes of "stuck-up Jesus freak" Maryanne (Amanda Bynes). Olive is a heroine we can get behind, with sass, balls and quips like "did I just get saved?"
This Mean Girls-esque teen romcom is so much better than I expected, putting the latest crop of grown-up romcoms to shame. It serves up the feelgood factor with sharp, smart satire. Meanwhile, despite a lot of talk about sex, there's nothing x-rated and, with Gossip Girl's Penn Badgley playing the love interest, there's no point trying to keep teenage girls away.
Rated M: 92 minutes.
