I remember seeing a commercial for this movie a few weeks ago and thought that it actually looked pretty funny. I'm pretty wary of teenage comedy's as usually the level of well thought out humour, intelligently designed plot, likeable characters, and enjoyablility is just not there for me. This movie on the other hand was very funny, well thought out, and well acted. Emma Stone plays Olive, a clean cut and generally invisible except to her few friends, teenage girl who finds herself a victim of the High School rumour mill when she tells a friend a lie. Her friend wants her to come camping with her family, Olive is uncomfortable with their strange habits (such as eating topless) and tells her friend that she can't come because she has a date with a college freshman. The next week her friend takes her vague responses to her questions as an indication that she must have lost her virginity to this mystery man. Olive decides to go with it so her friend will get off her case and her confession is heard by the very uptight captain of the Christian Crusaders Marianne. News of her lost virginity spreads throughout the school and Olive quickly finds herself sinking deeper and deeper into the rumour as she allows the lies to build. She finds herself connecting with the characters Hester from Hawthorns famous book, "The Scarlett Letter" and decides that if everyone is going to think she's a tramp, she's going to act the part (at least in terms of clothes and attitude). She stitches a red A to her shirt in posterity to the abused Hester and starts accepting her new role as the school tramp. Of course as comedies go this plan goes terribly wrong and blows so far out of control that Olive decides it's time to tell her side of the story via a live blog.
I spent some of this weekend thinking about the word redemption and what it means. Not necessarily the religious context of it, but the taking a wrong and making it right idea. I think this stuck with me because I watched a few movies over the weekend in which the themes were about making things right and using your pain to help others. Like everyone I have had some painful things happen to me and have struggled with the anger and despair that often accompanies being hurt. In the book The Shack the author calls his main character's pain (due to the murder of his youngest daughter) "the Great Sadness." This makes sense to me because some of the bad things that can happen in life seem so consuming that they haunt you no matter how hard you try to ignore them. I am often reminded of this fact when something new in my life causes me pain (a conflict. a death, etc). All of a sudden the floodgate of old pain re-opens and I find myself back at the beginning of my pain...
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