Interesting but hard to care about

Rating: 7/10 (16 September 2008)

Despite all the hype (mostly by women, I suspect), Juno is not that great or interesting of a film.
Granted, the production is top-notch, as is the soundtrack. And the performances by all the supporting cast were so believable, they made the movie worth watching.
However, the writing (for Juno, the main character) was odd and unbelievable. While the actress playing Juno was able to play the character competently, it just wasn't a realistic, or sympathetic character. Juno is kind of a boring jerk, spewing cynical and trite one-liners we've all heard a thousand times before on sit-coms. It's as though the writer of the movie envisioned this character as the coolest thing since sliced bread and gave her the "i'm too cool to be cool" dry one-liners and made everyone else her straight man. But ironically, I think it backfired because it made Juno, the girl, uninteresting right from scene 1, and it made all the characters around her compelling and tangible. I found myself ignoring Juno's often-pointless quips and honing in on her boyfriend's acting (and his amazingly subtle performance), or watching how real pros Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman acted. In fact, everyone BUT Juno was fun and interesting and I'd like to see more of them.
But I understand from reading a bit about Diablo Cody the writer that Juno herself was just an idealized extension of herself and that just didn't work for me. Juno came off too flat and too tired and too into herself to be a character I cared for. I mean, the instant Diablo wrote that all jocks secretly lust after the weird goth girls in school, I laughed my ass off at how Diablo must really think that the jocks really despised the hot pre-playboy blonds and instead thought that a greasy-looking, scrawny, tattoo'd chick with pale skin and a bad attitude was attractive. HA! lol. I think that just epitomizes how the main character was written about Diablo and for Diablo and frankly, Diablo's just not that interesting unless she's saying the word sex every now and then to keep the curious around.
The movie is well put-together and the supporting cast and soundtrack are worth the rental. If you like indie little feel-good flicks like Little Miss Sunshine, you'll like this. Though, I believe Sunshine had much more interesting dynamics in the relationships and I cared about the main character(s) right from the start.
thanks for listening.