Junebugged

Rating: 4/10 (6 March 2008)

Perhaps it is just me, but Ellen Page is a great actress only if her intention was to make her character superficial and irritating. The incessant stream of hipsterbabble that rolls off her supposedly 16-year-old tongue is a bit much to take, or believe. She finds she is pregnant and views it as if she had broken a nail (well, maybe two nails). The bewildered father of the unwanted child takes the news as if his girlfriend had developed a large pimple that wouldn't go away for awhile.
Yes, there is a somewhat interesting story here at the core, but everyone is so busy being glibly hip that they do their level best to conceal it and deny us any true movie enjoyment.
Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner do a creditable job as the well-to-do potential adoptive couple, with a smoldering hostility underneath. But the real scene stealer here is J.K. Simmons as Juno's dad, looking like a middle-aged Dwight Eisenhower, and coming off very human and daddish. Again the writers and director do their level best to screw this character up, but Simmons perseveres.
The movie features an extremely annoying soundtrack of cutesy-poo non-rhyming gibberish designed to sound hip and now. It also features one of the worst endings in recent memory. It teaches us that any behavior is OK, responsibility is overrated, and things will always work out if you're cool. How this oversweet pastry of a movie was nominated for Best Picture is a puzzle. Not terribly bad, just not overly good.