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This is a special film. Wouldn't suit everyone, which is assumable for independent cinema. You fully know that when you start watching it, and you're warned.

I read in Trivia that it contained some action scenes at first, but then Jim Jarmusch was asked to add more, so instead, he removed them completely. I find that a surprisingly great move. Contrary to a comment I read here, the film still has a lot of action/happenings in it, it's just that the lack of typical, clichéd fight scenes is really helping represent the mood and lets you sink in the film.

You have to understand, this is not a movie for the mass public. If it was, sure, Jarmusch would add the fight scenes, show some actions, show what fight moves the main characters are obviously capable of. But 'Only Lovers Left Alive' is something else. The mood is half of the film's main point, we're experiencing the feelings of people who are in a very interesting state of boredom: they are very, very bored, and very, very excited and passionate at the same time. Eve would collect hundreds of old books and read them with joy over and over again, Adam would buy expensive vintage instruments and passionately store them. But when Ava breaks a famous, special guitar, and half of the room filled with equally important instruments, he'd just react apathetically and move on. Ava destroys not only that, she ruins a lot more important to him; Adam is still reacting almost as if he's indifferent. Viewers of this film are offered the chance to experience this extreme apathy and boredom, mixed with passion about knowledge - science, invention, language, music - everything important humanity has created over time. The main characters don't have a lot of things that actually, visibly move them, given their experience - you can probably name only one. This is why it was best for the movie to develop slowly, without any action, than artificially try to put fight scenes in it.

Music. This is the core of this movie. Jim Jarmusch and his band Sqürl are responsible for most of the sound in it ("Other contributors to the soundtrack are Zola Jesus, Yasmine Hamdan, Dutch lute player Jozef van Wissem"), and according to Van Wissem, Jim "makes his films (...) kind of like a musician. He has music in his head when he's writing a script so it's more informed by a tonal thing than it is by anything else". The soundtrack creates a unique mood, and you'll find out the more you listen to it, the more the film explains itself. Soundtrack combines with the look of all the characters and you're suddenly in love with the film.

I read a couple of negative reviews and I can only conclude that this is one of those times when people have simply different expectations (high or just different) and they are overall too surprised to enjoy the movie as it is. Some say Holmes plays too young character for her actual age, some say the film isn't funny enough, when it should be a dark comedy and some complain the story is too predictable.

Main complaint however is that the storyline fails to develop enough to seem believable, and simply emerges to, quote, off-puttingly bizarre (review on holywoodreporter). I must disagree. This movie would not seem annoyingly odd, if you simply don't watch it with certain expectations, and this actually counts for almost any movie. Forget for a minute you're watching Tom Cruise's ex wife, forget that she's also a co-producer, and just let yourself enjoy the movie. Who says films should be "believable"?! You may treat this movie as a fairy tale and you'll get overwhelmingly fascinated by the tap-dancing, the hairstyle and the costume design in it.

You also may be surprised you actually like Holmes' acting. She plays a woman living in a fantasy world, who starts slowly meeting the reality - but who says she should meet the reality all the way through? She abandons her fairy-tale world for a while, just to fix the things that are too odd, but what's nicely surprising is she doesn't abandon it completely. I would say she plays some sort of an everyday super hero, because she fearlessly helps and saves people in need, but she's is depicted without the clichés for a superhero character, and the film is weird enough, in a nice way, to make us think of this without putting it too obvious.

Another reason to watch this movie is Brenda Abbandandolo's costume design. Miss Meadows' clothes, combined with her hairstyles and maybe the makeup, are the things that make this movie so enjoyable. For any fashion lover, this is a reason alone to watch it. Scenography is also nice, but Katie Holmes in a elegant high waist skirt wearing white gloves and tap-dancing shoes, with cute hair strands and big eyes, this is something completely overwhelmingly cute and sure a reason to love at least a little the film. Her well-illustrated character will make you like the rest of the cast's look - Sheriff's intentionally balding hair, bad guy's evil looking face and his character's overall look - the hair and the dog on a leash.

At last, I suggest if you suspect that you have developed any kind of high expectations for this film, simply skip it. Watch it only without prejudice, and you will enjoy Katie Holmes acting, and Miss Meadows' clothing and hairstyles.

I watched Easy A a few years ago and I got the impression it was simply a teenage comedy that wasn't really very good, but Emma Stone just made it ten times better, illuminating the whole film with her pretty, charming face. This is something a lot of people think, giving the comments here. It's wrong.

The film is good. A few days ago, after watching 'Magic in the Moonlight', I decided to see some more of Stone, and of course I thought of 'Easy A'. Watched it again and now that I pay more attention I discovered this movie itself is really nice and well- written, a film that goes beyond the typical, silly comedy targeting teenagers. Actors are excellent, script is good and dialogues are actually funny. On top of that, of course there's this brilliant, witty, pretty, intelligent Emma Stone. She is in fact capable of making a bad script/movie look good, but it's just not needed - it's already funny and entertaining and well-written.

Actually, I remember it had a lower score here on IMDb than it has now. I'm glad more people watched and re-thinked it and this was fixed. Give it a try, you won't regret it.