Not bad, but also not worth all the accolades . . . .

Rating: 6/10 (25 February 2008)

When any film starts creating buzz and garnering awards, I have to check it out to see what the deal is . . . . I found Juno to be OK, but not as great as its buzz claims  though it could have been with a few conscientious alterations.
There is a great deal to like, certainly  Ellen Page's performance, the treatment of teenage pregnancy in general, and the interplay of the characters. Unfortunately, the picture was marred by several things that either didn't ring true, or make sense within the confines of the narrative. The reaction of Juno's parents to the announcement of her pregnancy was blasé to the extreme! The stepmother's reaction I can almost understand  but the father? Didn't buy it  to him it was as big a deal as someone putting saccharine instead of sugar in his morning coffee!
The character of Juno herself was a bundle of contradiction. On one hand she seems to be wise beyond her years, and in other ways she's helpless. That might seem to make sense in the wake of her pregnancy, thus making the story more poignant, but somehow it just doesn't quite work. Juno's bonding with Mark was a pleasantly unexpected turn, but it went nowhere, and then Mark just disappears from the movie in the third act! When Juno tells her father that she knows someone that makes her feel accepted, I thought she was talking about Mark! I was surprised when she went to Paulie, especially based on his recent behavior in the third act of the movie. As such, her choice didn't ring true enough. If he was the one Juno chose, some voice-over narration throughout the flick indicating her caring for him would have made it make a bit more sense . . .
The music was, in a word, awful. The choice to use it was perhaps to give the movie more of an indie feel, but that still doesn't make it good. Maybe having Ellen Page sing all the songs would have worked, dovetailing into the duet she has with Michael Cera at the end  that would have made sense both actually and metaphorically.
All in all, Juno was a pleasant exercise, full of a potential that could have been realized had the film makers taken the time to step back from the work and see that the forest didn't look quite right for the trees.