Refreshing

Rating: 8/10 (24 June 2016)

This was surprisingly heavy for what was advertised as a rather light-hearted comedy. Yes, there are jokes made concerning Juno's pregnancy, but the situation itself is treated quite seriously by the characters. Juno's sarcasm is present in all of her dialogue regardless of mood, but it doesn't detract from the weight of certain scenes. A lot of Juno's sarcastic lines are of the tongue-in-cheek sort, making you smile rather than laugh out loud.
Of course, Diablo Cody's script is what always gets highlighted when discussing this movie. I must agree that it is a very well done script. The dialogue is really solid, even Juno's voice-over. The pace is nothing special, but the character intro for Vanessa was really something special. What I especially liked, though, was the portrayal of all the characters. It was great that all of them were treated with respect as people and had good and bad aspects to them. Bleaker is a possible exception to this, but he is an antagonist to Juno at a couple of points, also you might say that he does not take an active enough part in the pregnancy. However, the writing of Juno's parents was nice because this was the sort of movie that you might expect to portray all adults as total morons, but it doesn't. They can be stupid and misunderstanding, but no more or less than Juno herself is.
I think a subtle point that is made throughout is that experience is the best teacher. This theme comes up with the contrast between Juno and Vanessa. In a lot of ways, Juno is more prepared to be a parent than Vanessa is because she has to go through the unique hardships of her pregnancy, while Vanessa's only preparation is her precious little parenting books and magazines and off-yellow paint. Her overly-romanticized view of parenting has made her oblivious to how hard it actually is. Now, I'm not a parent myself, but I've seen enough parenting strategies to know that it's a frantic, difficult, and sometimes thankless job. Perhaps, this fact is part of Mark's motivation to ultimately SPOILERS leave Vanessa.
The acting is awesome from every part, big and small. Nobody is portrayed stereotypically, apart from maybe the Chinese girl outside of the abortion clinic. But that stereotype at least makes sense because it's not aimed at Asians, but rather adopted Chinese girls who could have been aborted. Plus, she proves to be pivotal in Juno's decision to go through with having the baby. The camera-work and other directing points are mostly unremarkable, but I got really annoyed by the music score. It fits the mood and everything, but it sounds like they're playing the same song with only three different chords the entire movie.
If you like any of the actors in this, it will be enjoyable. If the style doesn't appeal to you after about fifteen minutes, it's not worth continuing. But I would expect most casual viewers to enjoy it. It's emotional and genuinely funny and not in an annoyingly cute way. Aside from that it's a pretty impressive filmmaking achievement. Overall Rating: 8.2/10