Bite me again, Junebug

Rating: Null/10 (16 December 2008)

Every so often I have to completely shut down my movie intake to preserve my enthusiasm for the medium. It's not that I expect consistent high art, deep existential narratives, and labyrinthine complex characters and am frequently let down. I enjoy great trash as much as the next guy. But after awhile the sameness of mainstream cinema just gets to me. The feeling that I've seen this movie before. That I can look down at a stopwatch and recite verbatim the events as they unfolds on screen without ever actually observing them.
The feeling of "Why am I watching this movie?"
Perhaps that's why I react so strongly to films like Juno who, like it's quasi-animated opening credits, strolls along on a whim at its own quirky pace while downing a jug of SunnyD. Sure, like all stories, there's a conflict, complications, and a resolution, but Juno does so while whistling to its own goofy guitar riffs and gets to the inevitable destination whenever it feels like it with refreshingly little fanfare. So let me grab my guitar, a 64oz blue slushie, and a vase to throw up in, and we'll get this review under way.
The film understands a fundamental principle of human nature that many formulaic tear-jerker fail to get  that grandiose posturing doesn't necessarily resonate with the audience, nor does it capture the imagination. We've heard that song and dance before, and because of blatant whoring and oversaturation, we now dial it out. But those weird and awkward tidbits? Those freaky bits of nonsense trivia? Those are the things that make us stop and ask, "say what?" Soon after discovering her pregnancy, Juno goes to an abortion clinic where she runs into a classmate protesting, chanting the Pro-Life agenda  how babies have hearts and feelings, yadda, yadda, yadda. Juno sighs, rolls her eyes, and presses on. And, you know what? Babies have fingernails too. Now Juno pauses, furrows her brow and turns around, "fingernails?" Then suddenly, everywhere she looks, those blasted fingernails haunt her, scratching at her, rapping on a noisy surface impatiently just to p*ss her off.
This scene and Juno's decision to keep the child rolls by without letting the pro-life/pro-choice debate dominate the narrative. It carries the appropriate weight it should for a girl in her shoes, but never stoops to propaganda for one side or the other. It's a part of Juno's story, it helps shapes who she is, thus it's an unavoidable tangent handled with grace and subtlety.
Going on the hunt to find adoptive parents, I expected Juno to interview a number of potential parents in that obligatory montage of freaky-rific, hill-billy-tastic, and spaz-happy couples that these movies seem to require. It never came. Instead, her and a friend read through personal ads, dismissing the prospective parents as though deciding what CD they're in the mood for, and then Juno comes across Mark and Vanessa. That's it. That's the couple. Can we get some happily ever after music? What? Still have to go through with the rest of the movie? Okay, fine.
As Juno and her dear old dad drive out to meet the aspiring parents, we detect something amiss as we see towels and cuff-links straightened, magazines strategically laid out on the coffee table, and an obsessive compulsive attention to tidiness. It resonates with almost sinister intentions like the pair are hiding something, and this feeling underscores the narrative through the following conflicts.
Though impressed in general, none of these efforts really resonate with Juno ... until she spots a Les Paul tucked away in another room. I watched with fascination as a connection bloomed between Juno and Mark during their brief jam session. That is before obsessive-compulsive Vanessa breaks up the party. The seeds of that friendship further develop when Juno stops by to show off her ultra-sound, and she gets into a discussion with Mark whether Argento or Gordon reigns as the grandmaster of horror. It's not the relationship one would expect from a man and woman spending time with each other in one of these films, rather a kinship. She treats Mark like a strange cross between a father and a best friend and really wants her child to be with this pair because they're more mature than she is (they're old, after all) and, hey, this guy has good taste.
Hanging out in a mall, the film defied my expectations again. Juno spots Vanessa shopping with some friends who happen to have children of their own. Juno curiously looks on, watching this woman interact with kids. No doubt hoping to get a hint of how Vanessa will treat her baby. Every moment we've seen Vanessa, we've seen only a presentation, a façade which is inherently suspicious. Through Mark, we've seen signs of Vanessa's imperfections and hints to her tyrannical reign over his life. But now Juno can see her outside of the meticulously constructed illusion. Now Juno can observe who Vanessa really is.
I honestly expected to see a cruel woman with no patience, an evil control freak who makes kids screech with misery when they don't abide by her will. As Juno watches, though, we see a woman radiating with affection, and we realize that Vanessa's misguided efforts to paint a perfect household were the work of a woman who truly believes she was born to be a mom. A woman desperate for motherhood. She'll make mistakes, but she'll learn from them. She's a woman who will give this thing her all.
The plot eventually brings Juno and Mark together in a scene where conversation leads from comic books to music and they wind up slow dancing to a song played at Mark's prom. And I thought to myself, "You know, in a lesser movie Vanesse would walk in on these two, see them in each other's arms, and interpret it as something it's not."
She didn't.