Surprisingly bright teen comedy, littered with tidbits of literary and cinematic erudition, about a viral high-school rumor that transmutes a studious virgin into a “dirty skank,” a lesson in “the accelerated velocity of terminological inexactitude.” The path the story takes is not always judicious (the girl plays up her new reputation, wearing a scarlet “A” in tribute to Hester Prynne), and the husky-voiced heroine, Emma Stone, seems preternaturally poised at all stages of it, and the satire of the Jesus freaks is complacent and obvious, and yet the writing, while overly showy, remains throughout fast-paced and punchy, whether in the framing webcast that furnishes a loquacious first-person narration (“If there’s one thing worse than chlamydia, it’s Florida”) or in the snappy dialogue (“I got that V,” she laments to a gay male friend, “where you’d rather see a P”) that liberally spreads around the good lines, especially to the hip, cool parents (Stanley Tucci, Patricia Clarkson) and the hip, cool English teacher (Thomas Haden Church). The unhip and uncool are clearly differentiated. Both the opening credits, planted around the terrain like hidden Easter eggs, and the closing credits, over a leisurely travelling shot on the road to nowhere, are a significant part of the fun. With Lisa Kudrow, Penn Badgley, Amanda Bynes, and Malcolm McDowell; written by Bert Royal; directed by Will Gluck. (2010) — Duncan Shepherd