Which character is a better-written fundamentalist Christian teenager?
I find Saved to be a better film altogether by far, and I think that Marianne was very clearly inspired by Hillary. I think Amanda Bynes did a hilarious job, but I found Hillary Faye to be a lot meaner and crueler. There were moments I actually felt bad for Marianne, which HIllary Faye was just cruel.
Hail to the king, baby.
This movie was way better. But Hilary fay was way more awesome
shareSadly there is way too much real life inspiration. I doubt they needed to use Hilary Faye as an inspiration for Marianne. It's not as if Saved was iconic.
Don't get me wrong, I like both movies and Saved is more about fundamentalism than Easy A but the characters are separate.
For every lie I unlearn I learn something new - Ani Difranco
Hilary Faye is better written.
Easy A is a great movie but Saved is better.
The argument could easily be made that neither of them are particularly well written as fundamentalist Christian teenagers, since there are also many fundamentalist Christians who are not hypocrites and/or not popular.
Both are believable, as certain type of hypocritical and mean-spirited yet popular and socially influential fundamentalist Christian teenager, but Hilary Faye in Saved is a more developed character.
I think that they are much more representative of popular teens (particularly girls), who use social bullying to gain and hold power.
The thing about Marianne was that she was trying to be nice and "help" Olive, so it was kind of hard to hate her, even if what she was doing was for the wrong reasons.
I was kind of hoping she would come to the realization that people aren't bad people just because they do something her church tells her is wrong. When she instead realized Olive was nice because she must have "reached" Olive, I cringed -- but I was also disappointed because she was so close to thinking for herself and not just blindly believing everything her church tells her to believe. It would have felt liberating to see her realize that you didn't have to be perfectly squeaky-clean in order to be a good person.
I think that lesson was lost when Marianne finally listens to Olive's story, because she would have come to the conclusion that the reason Olive was a good person was because Olive never really had sex. That ending is more plausible, because it's not like Marianne's deep-seated Christian beliefs would transform just because she found out Olive was still a virgin. But, emotionally, I was hoping for her to mellow a little on her rigid view of the world.