2007-Dec-22 - Juno
A pleasing cast. A good soundtrack. A main character that's dealing with things way beyond her maturity level. All of these things add up to a fun movie that is definitely wanting to be the next "best movie of all time." Juno is about a girl named Juno (it's a good thing that it's the title of the film) that becomes pregnant and decides to keep the child. What could have been a strong film tries out too many different things and tries to milk the most from it's audience, but it just comes off as too artificial.
Juno is mostly an annoyance. Most of the characters tend to talk exactly the same, and that type of speech gets really old after the first few scenes. Juno, played by Ellen Page, is wonderfully portrayed but never knows when to shut her mouth. Her speech and sarcasm are amusing at times but not always welcome. The supporting characters' personalities are also irritating, and borderline unbelievable. What comes to mind is the "romance" between Jason Bateman's character Mark and Juno. It is often that a younger girl can fall in love with an older male, and it is also quite common that an older man can have feelings or urges for a much younger woman. Their relationship, taken at face value, is just a bunch of name-dropping and one upping each other. It's cute, and it doesn't reach the atrocities of Garden State, but it's very throw-away. It's not hard to see past the conversations to see what's really going on- both of the characters filling a void in each other's life. However, the relationship escalates at a strange rate, and at the peak, Mark's actions and thoughts are absolutely ridiculous and fake. It has little to do with how immature he is as a person and more to do with poor, forced writing.
Scenes tend to go on for too long, as characters demand to be respect and watched as they go on and on, whether it be Juno's step mom yelling at the sonogram nurse or The Office's Rainn Wilson making jokes at Juno's expense. Another example of poor writing is the way the parents handle the discovery of Juno being pregnant. Juno herself begs for mercy before she comes out with it, but for the most part, the parents sit back without really reacting. Afterwards they talk about how heavy the situation is, but their reactions during the conversation isn't believable in the least. The father jokes around, then gets serious and fed up for one line, then returns to not really reacting. It's not asking for the parents to freak out and yell at her, it's asking for some sort of human-like reaction. The scene is glaring in the sense that it was written just so the story could progress without any reason. Some sort of interaction between parents and their pregnant teenager would've been very welcome and, in fact, it was very expected. Unfortunately, what the audience gets is a piss-poor hasty scene with parents barely reacting to their daughter being pregnant. This scene is important, and it should have had more time spent on it rather than coming off as a writer thinking that there were more important and cool scenes to take care of.
Much of Juno suffers from in-genuine moments and characters. Absolutely everything feels fake, and the movie hides behind it's witty dialogue and zany characters. What's most interesting is the chemistry between Juno and Michael Cera's Bleeker character. The scenes including them are very touching and done well. They're a little sappy and lovey-dovey, but they absolutely work. As opposed to the rest of the scenes and situations, these are real. Had the film focused more on their relationship and less on trying to force the audience to feel uncomfortable via weird sexual tension between Mark and Juno, it would have been much stronger overall.
The film takes place through all four seasons, and each of the season's characteristics are present and appropriately pretty. Occasionally there is an interesting shot or camera angle, but for the most part the film is pretty by the books. A major problem with the film is how talky it is, and when every character basically sounds the same and is trying to be funny, the film gets boring pretty quickly. There are a few visual things, but strangely enough, they are mostly squooshed together in the beginning. They also managed to be as contrived as most of the other elements in the film. These sights range from a cartoon title sequence to a scene in which Juno explains what kind of woman a guy likes, and the camera is static on a woman that is being pushed around by an unknown entity and dressed like a librarian. These scenes scream out towards the audience, begging to be accepted as cool.
If anything in the film is awkward, its the yearning from the film itself to win the hearts of the audience and be the next cool, quirky comedy. Unfortunately, the film comes off as meaningless and boring, sprinkled with a few great scenes featuring Cera and Page (which are mostly at the end, unfortunately). Juno isn't an awful movie, but it's not mature enough to stick to it's strengths. It often goes out of it's way to be different and takes on more than it can handle - much like Juno herself. However, for the movie's sake, it doesn't work. Had the movie been simpler and just focused on the relationship of Bleeker and Juno, it would've been a stronger film. Maybe more cliche, but at the same time, it wouldn't have felt so fake.
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Includes film essays and reviews written by Chris Bell.
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