Review: ‘Juno’
Review: ‘Juno’
3 stars out of 5
Evidently releases from Fox Searchlight are still considered “independent”. I’m glad to see small films, financially backed by a conglomerate with a budget of $6.5 million still have a place in American cinema. With that said, Juno is a refreshing piece, not because of it’s snarky dialogue and shiny performances, but because of its fun nature. One may think that a movie featuring a teenage girl, knocked up after her trip to boing-boing and chooses to keep the baby may smack of preachy, religious toned rhetoric. Not here. In its place, we hear uber-hip dialogue, witty repartee and…Jason Bateman.
Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) is your proto-typical punk girl without all the alienating trappings. Too smart for own good, sarcastic and delightfully rebellious, young Juno, in a night of boredom despite good TV on that night, has sexual relations with friend boy Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cena). She becomes pregnant and begins to explore her options. After a quick trip to the local women’s clinic and a brief discourse on blueberry condoms, Juno decides to keep the kid and find some good needy parents “desperately seeking spawn” by way of the local Penny Saver. Class. Enter Mike (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner) upscale suburbanites in need of a child to call their own. Perfect teeth, big luxurious house and great jobs. Life appears like a things appear perfect. Not so fast. As American Beauty has shown us, as in life, things are not always as they appear in suburbia.
With a charming soundtrack acting like a whimsical narrator, Juno leaps from scene to scene with a vivacious screenplay that outshines the entire, mostly veteran cast. New scribe Diablo Cody, crafted a script crammed with so much sarcasm and perceived wit that any aspect of believability is almost nonexistent. Most of the lines in the films contain either a dated joke (pork sword? really?) or over-the-top pop culture reference that appears more forced than conversational. Considering the age of the Juno character, it seems unlikely that a pop-punk girl of her stature would be so snappy. At one moment in the film, Juno exhausted from a visit to Mike and Vanessa’s, mentioned that she was dealing with matters “way past her maturity level.” Yeah, that’s the omnipresent issue with the entire film. The script is not only the single largest weakness of the movie but also its saving grace. Ellen Page (Hard Candy) is perfection in the Juno role. Her rapid-fire dialogue, nonchalant attitude is fantastic and she shines so vividly that I’m afraid Ellen Page will be typecast into these sort of roles in the future. Also noteworthy is Jennifer Garner. Her supporting role as the adoptive mother shows a rare venerability but without rendering herself to open pity.
Juno is sure to be a remembered film and can quite possibly go down into the annals of key ’00s films. Fun and light but not void of meaning. The film carries a message of life in between the annoying jokes and multiple Melvins references and it shouldn’t be dismissed by audiences as another fart-filled hornball “teen comedy”. The size of heart in the movie is astounding and will leave the audience with more one-liners than a person could possibly handle.
