Juno

Rating: 6/10 (22 March 2008)

Movies about quirky, off-beat characters have been a staple of American indie cinema for years. And lately one of them has been a fixture as filler Oscar nominee, usually snabbing Best Screenplay. But what makes Wes Anderson movies different from Punch-Drunk Love, and what makes those different from Little Miss Sunshine, Napoleon Dynamite and this year's Juno? Well it depends on the degree of sell-out quality which, in the script, translates into how much do the off-beat, quirky characters end up happily integrated into conformity. Little Miss Sunshine, for example, is an idiot's feel-good movie, about a bunch of subnormal losers ruining a girl's life, and finally getting their chance to shine in an extended candy-flavored, undeserved, overlong catharsis scene. I think Tim Burton is the most honest (ironically a Hollywood director) craftsman of this type of story - his characters are unapologetically weird and they never end up accepted and subdued by society under any circumstance.
Juno is about a so-called geek, sarcastic teenage girl that ends up pregnant after having sex with a meek, feminine looking boy she's secretly in love with. Unlike what might be expected from a lesser movie, her parents accept the burden with maturity and actually collaborate with their daughter in her goal of giving the child to adoption. In trying to find the perfect couple, Juno comes into contact with a pair of yuppies, played by Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman. She's so crazy about having a child I'd never, ever in my life allow her to even touch one, while he lives mostly in the relics of his past, when he didn't have to hide his rock memorabilia and comic-books from view in a room, specially prepared by his wife for that purpose. Problem will not arise from conventional sources in this script, and that was one of the things that made me judge Juno above the type of garbage it definitively looks like from the ads and trailers. This is not the Little Miss Sunshine type - nothing will get so wrapped up by the end, neither can you see every scene coming from the first one onwards. Also, I gotta admit Ellen Page is an ugly-looking nothingness, but she's not without her acting chops.
And still, the Cody/Reitman team manages to fall into some of the independent director's traps. For example, in a movie written by a blogger, I guess it's to be expected that every character talks like they're press articles instead of people. This is not being intelligent, this is being annoying - if I knew someone who talked like this, I'd kick him/her on the genitalia. "Honest to blog", "silencio!", "your eggo is preggo" and other unneeded cutecisms populate every single line of dialogue. Every character is some kind of quirky pop culture savvy talking head. Of course, Juno is the worst - you're supposed to relate to her because she's covering a heart of gold under that stand-up comedy exterior. How come a cashier at an abortion clinic has her face covered by body piercing and cracks jokes at Juno's condition? Is that supposed to be so out of place it's funny? I see it more as overcrowding in a movie that's already bursting with forced oddity.
And still, the drama exhibits a level of maturity rarely seen in that colorful, rock-soundtrack sub-Hollywood that's "edgy" US film nowadays, most of it evident on the script's surprise development about the adoptive couple. Even though she's a psycho and he's an inmature dork, we understand both of them and the effect they have on Juno's already troubled mind. I also thought it was nice that Juno's parents weren't a couple of ogres. That her hero's journey has her saving the day by the end is predictable yet to an extent needed, but it brings to me another pet peeve - Juno has not in her one inch of the insecurity that's to be expected in any teenage girl, not only a knocked up one. That makes her a way too convenient protagonist and of course, smarter than everyone else around to an unrealistic extent.
I remain lukewarm on this one, although it's not a bad movie by any means. The soundtrack, the characters and the dialogue are annoying as all hell, but the actors really elevate the material (specially J.K. Simmons) and the script finds itself comfortable in that moral grey area where none is too perfect or too lousy a human being. I guess it's not good stuff either, but I can't bring myself to hate it 100%. I've seen far worse.