Diablo Cody...what would Ju No?

Rating: 6/10 (24 November 2008)

Juno is a 2007 film directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody. The film stars Ellen Page as the titular character, as well as Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, J.K. Simmons, Allison Janney and Jason Bateman. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September, 2007.
The film follows the story of Juno McGuff, a sixteen-year-old girl who discovers she is pregnant to her friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). Juno at first decides to have an abortion, but later changes her mind and decides to put the unborn baby up for adoption. Through an ad in the local newspaper, she finds Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner), a couple wishing to adopt. The film focuses on Juno's relationships with each of the different characters, Mark, Vanessa, her father (J.K. Simmons), her stepmother (Allison Janney), Paulie Bleeker, and her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby).
The film opens with Juno walking around in a cartoon landscape. This opening scene immediately sets the scene for the quirkiness of the film. Juno's on-and-off boyfriend Bleeker is part of a running team. At various points in the film we see the group of runners running past Juno in exactly the same fashion. This is I believe intended to show the repetitiveness of life, and is showing how Juno's life is different to most other peoples. There are other symbols of this, such as the tic-tacs that Bleeker is always eating. They also represent the repetition in life. There is also the symbol of the chair, which features at the beginning and end of the film, and is presumably meant to tie up the film in a circle, but I felt the chair symbolism was forced and didn't really do anything for me.
I absolutely hated the soundtrack. The songs chosen for the movie are clearly meant to reflect how quirky and off-beat the movie is, so I guess they fit, but it still doesn't stop it from being awful. The soundtrack includes multiple songs written by Kimya Dawson. Dawson was a personal choice from actress Ellen Page.
I didn't really like the film. It was mediocre; very forgettable. Perhaps if I was a pregnant teenage girl this movie would have spoken to me, but I'm not, so it didn't. My major criticism is the screenplay. Juno speaks with the vocabulary of an English professor. Is it meant to be funny? Cool? Smart? Clever? I wasn't entertained by it; it made the movie feel fake. Then at different points in the film, the character of Juno seems to completely reverse, and she uses words like "Forshizz", and an over-use of the word "like". It tried to contain too many references to typical teenage life, and tried to be funny but wasn't.
I would give this film 6/10.