Friday, December 14, 2007

Movie review: Juno

By Alex Bentley

Juno

Juno, a whip-smart teen, confronts an unplanned pregnancy by her classmate Bleeker. With the help of her hot best friend Leah, Juno finds her unborn child a "perfect" set of parents: an affluent suburban couple, Mark and Vanessa, longing to adopt. Luckily, Juno has the total support of her parents as she faces some tough decisions, flirts with adulthood and ultimately figures out where she belongs.

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on Juno

It is a rare pleasure to see a film on a serious subject that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is rarer still to have that film avoid the pitfalls that come with that humorous slant, namely dividing the film into protagonists and antagonists and never deviating from that. I prefer my films with a little more nuance, and Juno, director Jason Reitman’s sophomore effort, has that in spades.

Much like Reitman’s debut, Thank You For Smoking, Juno takes on a controversial subject (in this case, teenage pregnancy) and deals with it in a manner that neither ignores the inherent seriousness of the situation nor allows that seriousness to prevent them from finding humor in it. This is almost entirely due to the brilliant script from newcomer Diablo Cody, which, according to Reitman, who did a Q&A at the screening which I attended, remained unchanged from the time she finished it to the point it ended up on screen, an extreme rarity in the film world, especially for first-time screenwriters.

That script also allows all of the actors to inhabit characters that constantly surprise you. Ellen Page (Hard Candy, X3) is Juno, and her choices and reactions throughout the film throw any expectations about how a pregnant teenager is supposed to act on their head. She’s mature beyond her years, with interests ranging from Iggy Pop and the Stooges to the films of Dario Argento, yet she’s also enough of a kid to constantly down blue Slurpees, talk in a slang all her own, and, of course, have unprotected sex. And even though she’s somewhat of an outcast (even before her pregnancy), her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) is a cheerleader. The father of the child, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) is a seemingly gawky, pasty geek, but he’s also a stud at track, guitar, and cutting right to the heart of the matter. Juno’s dad Mac (J.K. Simmons) is a former military man who also happens to be quirky enough to name his children Juno (after the Greek goddess) and Liberty Bell. And her stepmom Bren (Allison Janney) puts to rest the film cliché that all stepmothers have to have awkward/frosty relationships with their stepchildren.

The odd couple eating in an odd place.

Appropriately, in a film full of characters that don’t act like you think they’ll act, the plot doesn’t follow a preordained route. As the previews show, Juno chooses to go through with the pregnancy, but she doesn’t just dismiss abortion out of hand, either (or for reasons you might suspect). She finds prospective adoptive parents (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) for her child through unconventional means (a free Penny Saver newspaper ad), and while the transition from agreeing to give them her child to actually going through with it is not as easy as she hopes, the surprise lies in the source of that unease. What makes Juno work so flawlessly is how it at once feels so familiar and yet is so fresh of an addition to the film landscape. Cody’s script zigs where you expect it to zag, but never goes beyond the boundaries of believability.

You never know who'll you find in the Penny Saver ads.

With such stellar writing and acting, Reitman’s contributions to the film might get lost in the shuffle. But, as he acknowledged in the Q&A, everything else lined up so perfectly in the film that he made the conscious decision to effectively get out of the way. You won’t see any flashy camera moves in Juno; just solid camerawork that lets the actors and the writing shine. Likewise, following a suggestion from Page, Reitman filled the film with catchy yet relatively obscure music from the likes of Kimya Dawson, her band The Moldy Peaches, and others that completely captures the spirit and tone of the story, and consequently feels like it could be the best movie soundtrack of the year.

In other words, Juno literally has everything going for it: great writing, acting, directing, music, etc., etc., etc. Some are calling it this year’s Little Miss Sunshine. In reality, Juno one-ups Sunshine in one important area: it might actually stand a chance to win the Oscar for Best Picture.

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