Juno is neither amusing nor touching

Rating: 4/10 (27 January 2008)

There's many problems with Juno, no matter where you stand on the teen pregnancy issue, that it shocks me how well this movie is being received. Much of it could do with the tone set by the script and director; is it a comedy? No, despite the supposed "hip" cultural references and wisecracks there are very few laughs to be found in this film. Is it a drama? Only if you consider awful made for the Lifetime television network films moving because that's the level of the writing here. The talented young actress Page tries to make the most out of the pseudo John Hughes meets Gilmore Girls lines she's given but it just doesn't work. Instead the Juno character comes off as though she may need serious psychiatric help, but don't worry because she's so cute and funny we'll be able to overlook her warped adolescent world view, or so the people behind this movie want us to believe.
I never bought it for a second. Outside of Page and the neat opening credits (for some reason director Reitman has a way with opening credits like in his previous cinematic turkey Thank You for Smoking...and little else) this movie is cringe inducing cutesy poo movie-making at its worst. The parents of Juno are right out of any John Hughes teen dramady from the eighties while the couple looking to adopt Juno's child are strictly paint by the numbers suburban zombies, especially Jennifer Garner's painfully clichéd wannabe mother. The rest of the cast from Juno's high school friends to the secondary characters that pass in her life are equally uninteresting. For some reason this movie is being compared to last year's sleeper Little Miss Sunshine but if you go and see Juno don't expect anything that good.