Over-rated

Rating: 4/10 (17 February 2008)

The mark of a wonderful film or novel is it's ability to take an ordinary story or situation and transform it into something remarkable and touching. Similarly, "Juno" attempts to take the increasingly common event of teenage pregnancy and weave a cutesy little spiel around the whole shemozzle.
Unfortunately it doesn't quite get there. Ellen Page displays a mountain of talent, but frankly her character's constant sarcasm, schoolyard-slang, not to mention the attention-seeking "individualism" are quite irritating. Of course the kid's heart is in the right place but who does she think she is? Do we care? The script is razor-sharp and riddled with witty one-liners but it's a little hard to justify a feature-length film on dialogue that may have been better suited to a comic strip.
Add to this some very misguided messages about sex, love and marriage, and a jumble of 1-dimensional characters (Michael Cera: the sweet dork you do so well is getting old) and you have a movie that is vaguely entertaining but ultimately unsatisfying.