Drifts away from reality, in an attempt to satisfy everyone.

Rating: 6/10 (7 January 2009)

Quite a fuss made about this movie. So I rented it. Glass of wine for company and about one hour and a half before my iPod's battery would die. So let us melt our eyes, trying to watch a movie in a 2 inch display.
A cute teenage girl, facing a constantly growing belly, who describes herself as a cautionary whale (her dad calls her Junebug), a 16 year old boy, that's now discovering the world of sex, that also, ironically enough, happens to be the baby's father and a couple of adults, who are "sexually active" (which by the way is a perfectly understandable expression, contrary to Juno's beliefs), but cannot conceive, so they put up an ad in a paper, asking for a baby to spare. And who can forget the secondary characters, like Juno's dad and stepmom, Mac and Brenda, or Juno's dumb cheerleader friend, Leah?
Regarding plot, don't expect anything special; kid gets pregnant with unwanted baby, kid gives it away, kid lives happily ever after. But in the end, the characters are richer for the experience, and regain hope on true, never fading love. I like that, it's a positive message for a movie. Kinda overwhelmed by Hollywood clichés, but I guess it's better than High School Musical or the likes.
Now, Juno is a character, which, I think, many people can, or better, want to relate to. She's a simple teenage girl, curious about life, has real emotions and believes in love, and, although being a victim of the situation, she takes control of it and handles it graciously. Yes, Juno is a girl many girls want to be alike. But as heart-warming and touching her character was, I found the attempt, or better, the obsession of the creators to make her just a typical girl, to have brought out some bad parts out of her. For instance, while watching the movie, and you're 50 minutes in, you find the constant teenage slang, (50% of which you can't hear teenagers say) to be getting tired. From that point of view, you can see that Juno parts ways with reality. The girl that is dragged around by her urges, somehow manages to carry out this next to impossible task, on her own, always making the right decisions? In addition to that, her love confession was nothing but convincing. No, this was supposed to be the best moment of hers, but it turned out to be the worst. I personally didn't get won over by her words.
Bleeker. Gotta hand it to the writer, Bleeker as a character was thought out, and realistic. Just think about how he always ran miles, yet never got any muscles at all; he did work out, but he wasn't a jog. He was a father of a child, yet he was still essentially a kid, on his own. No mustache, no facial hair. He was exactly the type of guy that Juno wanted. He has no backbone, he's a scared kid, so he's staying away from the whole pregnancy thing. But he, on his part, never stops liking Juno, which is something I respect in him.
Now Mark and Vanessa are the best part of the movie. They're story of their own, enclosed in the general plot. Mark, a victim of his music and his talent, that never gave up on being a rockstar, and Vanessa, exactly the opposite, a grown up woman, who has made up her mind on what she wants; she wants a little crying, pooping, screaming, but oh so cute, thing called a baby. Theoretically, the characters seem fine, but every time they were portrayed, the atmosphere was way uncomfortable, and not in a way premeditated by the director. I can't put my finger on why this happened, maybe it was Vanessa's constant uptightness, maybe the whole Mark-Juno situation which brought out a feeling of something not right happening there, I don't know. What I do know is that the characters that had the most potential didn't stand up to my expectations.
Acting, that's a whole different story now. Page (Juno) wasn't anything special; an acceptable performance, for a mediocre role. It's not hard to play a teenager, which is more or less one dimensional. The script just landed perfectly on her personality; she didn't have to put much work to get into the role, because, at some extend, she was playing herself as a teenager. Besides, she maybe overdid it. She focused so much on being a simple teenager, that she came out much stupider than she wanted her character to be. Cera (Bleeker) was annoying, but the overall performance was good. Bateman (Mark), a simple role, executed well, and Garner (Vanessa) carried out her role quite decently. Everyone else, including Juno's sister, who apparently doesn't talk, were fine.
In conclusion, Juno is a film describing a plausible situation, but it's cluttered; the writer set up a situation with a lot of potential at the start, but trying to fit too many things in just one a half hour didn't turn out nicely. It looks like Diablo Cody ended it too quickly, and as a result, not all loose ends could be tighten up. I feel another hour would have done this flick justice, but apparently that was impossible. So we ended up having a movie that is nowhere near bad, but far from excellent, as well. The matter of teen pregnancy is handled very poorly in the movie, and the point of view is flat. No peer disapproval, no internal mental continuous struggles, just a girl that decides halfway through the movie, to look if true love is out there . Lot of potential, once again, promising characters, but too much fuss for something that didn't really deserve it.