You know I’m starting to think this isn’t just a pot-belly’ — Ellen Page (l) gets knocked up in the slightly-too-quirky Juno
Also film reviewer is shockingly passive-aggressive toward hipsters
“That movie was totally random!” Laurie exclaims as she walks out of Juno hoping this assessment demonstrates an impressive grasp of the narrative’s essential themes. She adjusts her ironic white-framed sunglasses and frowns at a butter smear on her extra-ironic neon green high-tops.
“Turbo random” agrees her companion Max while absent-mindedly stroking his wispy stubble. “I wonder what Weber would have to say about the subtle undertones of social deviance present throughout.”
Juno is a hipster movie pure and simple. The frank intimate camera work the quirky characters the slow editing the semi-animated credit roll the fact that the screenwriter’s name is Diablo Cody — nearly everything about it is symptomatic of a movie made by and for people who pay way too much for ridiculous clothing and listen to music that you “wouldn’t get.” That said it’s also quite fantastic.
The film hits all the right coming-of-age comedy notes in spite of its too-cool-for-school esthetic managing to be both stylish and intelligent without being either pretentious or annoying. While its exterior may be nothing but distilled indie cool at its core it has a very modest emotional honesty that even the most ostentatious styling can’t obscure.
The story picks up when the unfortunately named Juno MacGruff (Ellen Page) finds herself pregnant with the spawn of her best friend Paulie Bleeker (Micheal Cera). After a quickly abor — er rethought plan to have the pregnancy terminated Juno turns to a bargain magazine in search of potential adoptive parents. She finds them in Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner) an affluent couple who despite some idiosyncrasies seem decent enough. Predictably the pregnancy forces the quick-witted Juno to learn some important life lessons bond with those around her and generally come-of-age. And no it doesn’t have subtle undertones of social deviance throughout.
While it’s a familiar yarn to be certain screenwriter Cody and director Jason Reitman ( Thank You for Smoking) are able to put a fresh enough spin on it that the old tropes never feel tired or clichéd. Unfortunately the good story also highlights the film’s biggest flaw. Simply put Juno’s story would be good no matter what esthetic the film used so all the squiggly animated titles and colour-saturated shots feel a touch garish. The indie-folk soundtrack is similarly distracting and while it does eventually tie into a cute little beat at the end like the film’s visual style it makes Juno feel as though it’s trying a bit too hard.
In spite of this Juno is still a great film. It’s just that anything that has to be great in spite of something isn’t as great as it could have been. Juno could have been a unique individual film. Instead it sacrifices this so it can hang out with the cool kids for a few hours.
