If you loved Superbad and Knocked Up... Ah screw it! The movie sucked.

Rating: 3/10 (10 February 2008)

This weekend, my girlfriend drove down from Purdue visit me here at good old IU (she's transferring next year, thank God). Apparently, Purdue has some school-sanctioned P2P video sharing software that she recently got hold of. At a friend's suggestion, she downloaded Juno, and wanted to watch it with me. I personally thought the movie was a little too "chick-flicky" for me, but I absolutely LOVED Superbad (proud owner of the DVD, t-shirt, and theatrical poster), so I thought "What the hell, it has Michael Cera, and it'll make my girl happy." After watching the movie, I felt the need to watch Superbad again and make sure the same actor that was hysterical in that movie could possibly be the bland, unfunny male "lead" in Juno. Thankfully, I wasn't alone. My girlfriend shared my sentiments as well, so i didn't feel like a total a-hole.
First of all, I consider myself a bit of a music nerd (or Nazi, as my girlfriend suggests). I read in an internet headline somewhere a while ago that Cera showcases his musical talents in Juno and thought that was pretty cool. But I was wrong... dead wrong. The soundtrack in the movie made me want to bash my acoustic against my car so I could never accidentally play any chords reminiscent of the abomination to music I heard in that movie. Anyone who could listen to that "music" and say to themselves "Hey, this is awesome" is either: A. Under the age of 6. B. Have the mental capacity of a 6-year-old. C. Tripping on mushrooms D. Lying to himself/herself.
The movie itself was hardly amazing. All the characters were next to impossible to relate to. Cera's character, even though he was supposedly Page's character's best friend, was next to worthless when it came to plot development... If Juno was impregnated by some nameless father who is briefly mentioned, the movie would have changed very little. Her family is weakly developed, as well. Her half-sister is mentioned maybe 3 times, and shown even less. It would have been very interesting to see the dynamic relationship between pregnant older sister and innocent younger sister, but nothing is shown.
The adopting couple are the only interesting characters in the whole damn movie. I was way more interested in the back-story of these two, but nothing is given about Jennifer Garner's character and Jason Bateman's character is way more interesting than the few paragraphs of back-story we are given on him. I would have loved to see his transition from underground rocker to corporate sellout, but yet again I'm disappointed. Hell, if the entire movie revolved around these two and Juno was only a minor character, my review would probably be a lot different.
Enough with the pop-culture references already!!! There is a time and place for them, and that's usually in an animated comedy like Family Guy (love it!!!) or The Simpsons. "Movies" like Epic Movie, Date Movie, Scary Movie, and Meet the Spartans prove this time and time again. If it's longer than an hour, keep the references out of it. Superbad was hilarious, and the only reference I can think of is one about Orson Wells, which the target demographic would probably be clueless about.
The characters were so unbelievable it was sickening. Besides the young couple, there wasn't a single character I could look at and say "That character totally reminds me of (fill in the blank)." Juno tries to be too many personalities at once. One moment she's stupid and obnoxious, then she's sarcastic and nonchalant, and all of a sudden she's calm and rational. I can understand having a deep and complex main character, but when the character jumps from one extreme to the next in the same scene, it gets really tiring really fast. Cera's character Bleeker is so mundane and boring it's inconceivable how the two of them could be friends, aside from the fact that absolutely no one under the age of 45 would wear shorts like the track team that he runs for wears (in fact, i have no clue where someone would buy shorts like that).
I've seen that a lot of people were bitching about the film's "pro-life" agenda. While I think it's disgusting that someone could be mad about that, I thought the movie was totally indifferent to the subject. It made abortion protesters look like clueless morons with no support, while it made the clinics look like they're run by incompetent and unsympathetic jerks. While both of these are untrue in real life, and the movie is obviously attempting to satirize the two, the way the movie goes about it is so unfunny that most people don't even get the joke. In fact, the only reason I could find that Juno would walk out of the clinic is simply because the movie would be too short.
All-in-all, the movie is a let-down. It's obviously targeted to high-school and college girls and tries to make anyone who dislikes it feel like they're "out of the loop." It doesn't surprise me one bit that this thing was given an Oscar nomination. It's mostly because a comedy can't be funny if it wants to win Best Comedy, and Juno is definitely a prime candidate for that.