Oscar Review: Juno

Juno
Written: Diablo Cody

Directed: Jason Reitman

Starring: Ellen Page and Michael Cera

"Honest to Blog" There it is, the line that made me cringe the most in Juno. Some others had it much worse, being annoyed by every "quirky" thing about the film from Juno eating lunch in her high school trophy case or her having a plastic phone shaped like a hamburger. I am not writing this review to argue against these people, the thing would have to be pages long. I have been an avid defender of Garden State, Little Miss Sunshine, and many others that receive the "quirky" complaint. So let me just get out of the way that yes, Juno is a very quirky movie that may have a few too many weird lines of dialog that seem to "hip" and that no one really says in real life. Let me also get out of the way that even though writer Diablo Cody is getting criticized by a few people for her writing, she is essentially doing the same thing Quentin Tarantino does with his writing. She creates a hip lingo that doesn't really exist, and I(as do most) marvel at Tarantino...so why not Cody?

Now that we got that out of the way lets get on to the actual film. Juno Macguff (Ellen Page) is a 16 year old junior in high school who is probably the coolest girl to never exist. She is witty, loves good music, and coincidentally is pregnant. The father is Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) who is Juno's best friend. He runs track and is addicted to tic-tacs. Juno claims that she had sex with Paulie out of sheer boredom but Paulie was hoping that much more was involved than just boredom. Juno decides to have the baby, but instead of raising it she wants to let a family adopt it. After searching she comes across Mark and Vanessa Loring, a somewhat typical young suburban couple. While Vanessa is nice and almost tries too hard sometimes, Mark seems unhappy with his current lifestyle and misses his rock and roll days from when he was younger. He sees this personified in Juno and as she moves throughout her pregnancy her and Mark see more and more eachother culminating in a lesson in maturity for the both of them.

Juno is a very funny movie. All of the characters are lightning fast with their responses and everyone seems to play off of eachother very well. Ellen Page especially deserves her oscar nod for creating one of the most likable characters of the year without seeming too cheesy with most of her delivery. The only problem with most of the humor was that it seemed almost toned down at points that took me out of the film. There is an excess of the word "friggin" throughout the film, but we all know what they would be saying in real life. Despite that I enjoyed a lot of Diablo Cody's dialog, she is not a master writer but for a first screenplay Juno is certainly very impressive(much more impressive than what I could churn out). Just about all the acting is enjoyable. Michael Cera as usual is very funny with his standard facial reactions mixed with awkward dialog. I am not a big Jennifer Garner fan but she really shines in this movie especially in a scene that takes place in a mall where she feels the baby kick for the first time. Jason Bateman and Michael Cera do not share any scenes together so there is no Arrested Development references, even so Jason holds his own and I am glad he is getting some better roles now(The Ex and Smoking Aces bleh) Juno pulls no punches when talking about music or movies either, extended conversations about Sonic Youth and rare horror gems like The Wizard of Gore are all over the place, causing some awkward moments of only 2 or 3 people in the theater getting the joke.

Despite it's humor and silly exterior, Juno has some very touching moments within, almost all of them accentuated by former Moldy Peach, Kimya Dawson doing the soundtrack. There is a performance of "Anybody Else But You" that is a key moment of the film and challenges anyone not to crack a smile at how sweet it is. The film is not afraid to go deep with some of it's emotions and it definitley works well, making a much more serious movie than most would expect. 2007 has been the ultimate year for "having a baby" movies and Juno brings it to the teens. It almost takes me back to when I was in 9th grade and had a lot of friends that were "hip" like Juno, none of them pregnant of course. These people shaped my taste in just about everything and Juno makes me miss them terribly. If anything can tug on my heartstrings hard enough to make me think of all my friends from back then and focus on pregnancy in a humorous and serious way without a moments hesitation between the two...It is definitley one of the best films of the year.

9.7/10