Your typical "oh-so-smart" indie movie

Rating: 5/10 (19 April 2010)

Juno suffers from the very typical "indie movie syndrome".
Obscure and outdated pop-culture references, over-the-top jargon, smartass and typical characters...
The "aren't we cool, eh?" vibe can be felt throughout the whole movie, while the story itself ends up being little more than a platform where to build a mountain of self-referential jokes.
Also I have severe reservations on Juno herself...
The wise-cracking, anti-conformist 16 years old Juno is supposed to be smart to the point of being obnoxiously smart, yet she gets pregnant with the blissful idiocy of your random airhead bimbo.
And here lies my main issue with the movie... Juno isn't a realistic portrait of a teenager. Juno talks and acts in a way which is just not the way a 16 years old would talk and act.
It's quite easy seeing through her and finding her character is a projection of the screenwriter's ideas and thoughts. Also the pop-culture references are out of context and clearly out of Juno's time.
Juno is not a realistic, cool-anti-conformist teenager, she's how the screenwriter thinks a cool and anti-conformist teenager should be.
The rest of the characters are off the same mould. The ditzy friend, the awkward-yet-supportive family, the oblivious boyfriend, the rich-but-unhappy couple..
It's a shame, because the topic and the story itself had potential, but the excess of witty self-complacency killed the movie, basically making it some sort of CollegeHumor project.
Underage pregnancy, abortion, adoption, single parenting and immature adults are topics that deserved a better and more insightful development.
Instead Juno treats her pregnancy as if it was just a severe case of excessive gas... Annoying yes, but a goldmine for jokes and odd situations. Once the burden is disposed of (be it by abortion or adoption) let's just carry on as if nothing ever happened.
A final note, of course she could NOT find a normal family to give her child to... It just had to be an odd couple of a fretful woman and a man-child. A man-child who is into the same things Juno is (shame he was actually ALIVE to remember them, while Juno has apparently spent years on OldFads.com) and the presence of the young girl triggers his midlife crisis.
All in all Juno fails because it's unrealistic, clichÃ© and smug. None of the characters are endearing due to the excess of "smartassery".
Passable at best, clearly not worth all the hype.
Also I bet it'll age horribly and in a matter of few years nobody will get the majority of the references