The epitome of teenage inanity.

Rating: 2/10 (18 May 2008)

If you haven't been living under a rock for the last few months, you've probably seen or heard of this movie. First off, this is actually a very good movie, speaking in strictly technical terms, but I don't like it. The acting is good, with Hard Candy star Ellen Page putting on an awesome performance, and the supporting cast being equally convincing, and the directing is fine. But everything else just drags the movie down in a steep slide.
Mostly this is just too annoying and cutesy to ever be worth anything other than usage as a beer coaster. The character of Juno always has some sort of witty comment or snide remark, and - surprise! - all of the side characters usually do, too, and it is horribly irritating, a one-trick pony of a comedy cop-out that might make prissy teenagers laugh and feel endowed with a sense of superiority to their peers, but if you like good comedy, this will just come off as stale. The dialogue? MAN, THAT IS AWFUL. "Yo yiggidy yo"? "Forshizz"? And the overwrought use of "like"? Barf-central. Jason Reitman seems to think that if he throws enough pseudo-witty jokes and one liner cracks at a wall, he'll create a Comedic Masterpiece, but it just doesn't work that way. There isn't anything really funny underneath all the "hip" dialogue and the attempted wit.
The soundtrack is almost as bad. A load of pretentious, sappy indie emo rock crapola that will do nothing but make you scratch your head and wonder why it's there. Oh, is that part of what makes this movie intelligent and deep? I'm sorry.
But the real problem is the fact that this movie seems to try to be intellectual and deep with its story about teenage pregnancy and the emotional issues surrounding it, but the whole thing is encased in the sort of disgusting "ironic" humor that seems to pass as thought provoking and soulful these days - Juno trivializes these issues and makes them seem small and insignificant (Juno referring to her situation as "being in a pickle," for instance...), and that shoots this right down the crapper. This is too candyflossed and fluffed up to achieve anything it sets out to do, and so it is a failure.