Juno (2007) Reviews

• about as indie as Avril is punk rock

  ceburo2008-02-21

  I rarely post things on internet blogs but this is a bit of a concern of mine. I am worried that beautiful films such as L'Infant are going to now be classified in the same category as Juno. I understand the mass appeal of this movie-- the mainstream audience being confused and thinking it's an indie flick by the gritty film used and the obscure references but Juno is in no way an independent film. I think why it is so ineffective is because the audience it was trying to attract (the movie fanatics who hate big budget Hollywood junk i.e. anything with Jessica alba in it) saw it for what it really was: Hollywood junk wrapped up in a converse shoelace bow. It was as indie as Avril is punk rock. Furthermore it is (in my opinion) a tasteless, pointless movie. For the majority of the film I am more annoyed with Juno than I am sympathetic to her plight. I also have a hard time relating to her as she is NOT a 16year old but rather a 35year olds characterization of a 16 year old (does this make sense?) I have NEVER heard a teenager / young adult in my life ever utter ridiculous lines such as "honest to blog?" or "yea I'm total for-shiz". What the hell? I thought maybe a stripper turned blogger would have been a little more able to develop a story with characters that are down to earth but this Juno character is absurd. Plus the rest of the film is completely underdeveloped-- you never see the relationship with her stepmother develop or understand why it is the way it is. Her relationship with bleaker has maybe 25 minutes but it is in no way a developed understood relationship. In fact he's barely even seen! The summary of the movie includes the words "and with her beautiful friends help…" but in the movie there is absolutely no connection with her friends beauty and the relevance of it. Was there supposed to be some conflict? All these story arcs that were never completed. I was very disappointed with this movie. Fox searchlight has produced many good films (notes on a scandal, little miss sunshine, the last king of Scotland, etc) but this is just an embarrassment. It wasn't as though the actors were bad-- Michael Cera as usual plays the adorable awkward adolescent and Ellen page, Jason Batemen, Jennifer Gardner, etc play their roles respectively but the whole premise of the movie was so over the top and unrealistic. Oscar worthy? It's ludicrous. This is a movie worth missing.

• Manipulative and Simplistic

  isabelle19552008-01-13

  Look, I do get it. I fully appreciate that a film about a girl who gets pregnant, has an early abortion, then manages to move on, would be a pretty short movie. In fact, so short it wouldn't get made. No one wants to know about reality. And certainly in 21st century North America, no one wants to portray abortion as a viable option. Very, very bad form currently. But when I see this film reviewed as "blazingly truthful" and the pregnant 16 year old central character described as being 'in a pickle', as I did in one review, as if perhaps she'd forgotten a homework assignment and might get detention, I have to admit that the cynic who lurks in my soul gets full rein. This is basically a cutesy film about being pregnant at 16, where despite a few problems, everyone gets to live pretty much happily ever after. Gosh, girl in a pickle comes good! Ahhh!! And apparently everyone in the cinema where I saw it was quite overwhelmed by attacks of the warm fuzzies, except me. Two seats away, a woman slightly older than me was weeping joyfully by the end while behind me, young women were giggling happily as sweet Juno's bump grew. Good grief! Is this really a message we want to give to 16 year olds? I'm beginning to think I'm something of an oddity. You see, I don't find it 'blazingly truthful' that a bright, resourceful and articulate 16 year old as Juno is portrayed, would be so dumb as to have inadequately protected sex then seem surprised to find herself up the spout. One point of the script is that Juno herself apparently initiated the sex, thought it through in advance in fact, because she was bored. I therefore assume the pregnancy was at least to some extent planned. And if she really had no idea that sex might lead to pregnancy, her parents (portrayed as bemused but supportive), should be excoriated for such inadequate parenting. And if I see one more review which describes Juno as a comedy about growing up 'and the bumps along the way….' (I'm prepared to bet good money on that having been written by a middle aged man), I swear I'm going to run amok in the local mall with a urine dip stick. Being pregnant at 16 isn't a sweet joke, abortion clinics (whatever you think of their morality - and I'm neutral on that) are not run by morons, and while Juno has some amusing one-liners, and a good central performance from Ellen Page, it is basically a deeply flawed, superficial movie which is trying too hard to be cute. It's extremely manipulative. I'm going to be very controversial and suggest that far from being surprised by an unplanned pregnancy, Juno might actually be a very willful young woman who wants to add pregnancy/childbirth/adoption to her 'experiments-in-living' list. At everyone else's expense. It certainly makes her the center of attention. She wouldn't be the first girl to get pregnant for that reason. I found the situation between the adoptive parents more convincing. Childless Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) is desperate for a baby. Husband Mark is not so sure, and does at least eventually face up to the truth of his uncertainty by making a break for it. He may be 40 going on 18, but he's being honest about it. And for me the most moving scene in the whole film was when Vanessa held the newborn child in her arms for the first time, having decided to go it alone as a mother anyway. If there is a message to be taken from this movie, it's possibly that becoming a mother when the time is right, is just fine. A superficial, cutesy, lightweight movie. The fact it was written by a woman is no excuse. I am gobsmacked that it's been nominated.

• Critic's drool over slack "Juno"

  roy-zornow2008-04-19

  What is it about any movie that shows a hip white woman bringing her baby to term that causes film critics to temporarily lose their minds? "Knocked Up" was given a free pass and Juno is inspiring some of the worst film criticism I've ever seen. The truth is that "Juno" is a calculatedly juvenile film with an immensely appealing main actress (Ellen Page), fake meta-dialog, and an inability to follow-through on its central theme of abandonment. Juno is constructed so as to allow moviegoers to feel as if they've gone through a significant emotional journey, without doing the work. One way it blunts serious emotions is through the use of hipster patois in the place of real dialog. Rob Harvilla, a music critic with the Village Voice described this best: "Teenagers who talk like thirtysomething screenwriters. "Cool" parents who talk like teenage screenwriters. A 16-year-old heroine who actually says things like "Just looking to secure a hasty abortion!" and "Just dealing with things way outside my maturity level!" and (grits teeth) "Swear to blog!". Just appallingly cute cute cute CUTE CUTE." The cutesy dialog has been universally panned in reviews, but its also serving to throw critics off serious discussion of the film's major shortcomings. A.O. Scott in the New York Times: "...not many are so daring in their treatment of teenage pregnancy, which this film flirts with presenting not just as bearable but attractive. Kids, please! Heed the cautionary whale. But in the meantime, have a good time at "Juno." Bring your parents, too." Scott cannot resist writing in a similar style to the dialog, in fact thinking in this teenage way. "Heed the cautionary whale. But in the meantime, have a good time at "Juno." I don't know anyone personally who has brought a pregnancy to term and given up her baby, but I can imagine it's a lot more painful and less attractive than is portrayed in Juno. No amount of squiggly animated fonts and warbly hypersincere outsider-style singing can make up for that fact, and pretending otherwise is the opposite of daring. At one point in the film, after he adoptive couple has seen their relationship dissolve, the character Juno gives voice to the main point of the movie. She says something like: "I just want to know that love can last. That two people can love each other and it's not going to go away." A movie-sequence childbirth follows, then a shot of Juno saying she does not want to see her newborn, followed by a single tear coursing down her face. Cut to a postpartum Juno, happily riding her bike, spitting wisecracks and singing twee duets, with the afraid-of-his-own-shadow Paul Cera. I'm not being a moralist here, I don't want to see the character Juno punished for giving up her baby. But it's an unsatisfying experience to have the main theme of the movie evaporate, and to instead be fed a dose of indy candy rather than a resolution, or at least a coherent point of view. Critics have responded to this shortcoming by either ignoring it - offering, as Scott does, a blithe positive assessment of the films earnestness, or else, as Stephanie Zacharek does in Salon, constructing tortuous "filmic" criticism: "Juno" is partly about the necessity of making choices for ourselves, but it's also about knowing when we need to accept help from others. That idea is never spelled out in so many words; it comes through in the actors' faces. "Language is the house man lives in," Jean-Luc Godard told us, borrowing from Martin Heidegger, in "Two or Three Things I Know About Her." There are lots of words in "Juno." But in the end, it's really all about language." OK I'm going to let the royal "we" pass. Her evasive argument reminds me of "cold-readings" by psychics, who employ verbal tricks to keep their marks engaged: "you're a shy person, but if it's something you care about you have strong opinions, although you mainly keep them to yourself, but when the chips are down..." Zacharek's version is: "it's all about language, but not the talking kind, but instead the kind you find in actor's faces, when they are letting you know they need help, which is really what it's all about, just ask Jean-Luc Godard, when he borrows from Martin Heiddeger." Anything to keep abandonment at bay. Perhaps it's a zeitgeist thing, there seems to be a generalized post 9/11 anxiety about the future of mankind, for example the spate of recent movies about apocalyptic threats to civilization (cf. "Cloverfield", "I am Legend"). Combine this with role-uncertainty created by modern decisions to delay childbearing (cf. Lori Gottlieb's article "Marry Him" in the Atlantic Monthly), and the result may be that a simple squiggly-lined movie about a young woman's lack of anxiety in furthering the human race has an appeal that is irresistible. Just not to me. Swear to blog.

• Review of Juno

  behrlich392013-12-03

  Juno has an effect on you. You can tell by the opening title sequence that this movie has a lot of heart. The unique dialogue may come off as annoying to some but I find it to be one of the reasons the characters feel so real and likable. I felt as if Juno was a real person throughout the whole film, thanks to Ellen page. Her performance is perfect and there could not have been a better pick for the lead role. All of the casting choices are great. Including J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney as Juno's Parents. Jason Reitman did his best directing in his career by far on this film, in my opinion of coarse. Diablo Cody's perfect script would have been ruined by any other director. But Reitman has an amazing control of tone. On a personal level Juno has left an impression on me and I will truly never forget it.

• A shallow, poorly considered exploitation of these important issues

  mrethanboy2008-01-16

  At first blush, "Juno" seems like a pretty great movie. It's entertaining and lots of fun to watch. There's a great cast, and each of the film's characters are well-sketched and interesting. First-rate cinematography keeps the film colorful and engaging from start to finish. There are more than enough quirks, witty dialogues and obscure name-droppings to keep the hipsters placated. Perhaps it's just a bit pretentious and tries just a bit too hard, but these flaws could be overlooked. The movie should have been a charming little indie-lite film. But it's not. Ultimately, I stepped out of the theater feeling frustrated and unsatisfied. The problem is that "Juno" tackles two very relevant issues in today's society –- namely, abortion and teenage pregnancy –- and utterly fails to address either in a way that is realistic or compelling. Now, maybe it's unfair to expect Juno to make a decent exploration of these complex themes. It's just a comedy, after all. However, even as many critics praise the movie's keen humor and witty banter, it's hard not to get caught up in the fact that this movie painfully abuses these highly relevant issues. In one particularly wince-worthy scene, Juno's stepmother tells off an ultrasound technician for indicating that teenage mothers are less capable of taking care of their kids than adults. She argues that teenagers could be just as devoted to their children as their adult counterparts, and that she should stick to the things that she knows about. Instead of defending her position, the technician wordlessly exits while Juno, her friend and her stepmother exchange verbal high-fives. The film makes offers no exploration of the ultrasound technician's completely valid viewpoint. Are teenagers ready to leave school to get a job and start supporting a dependent of their own? Are these kids really mature enough to tackle these issues? Should they have to? Does the amount of devotion to the baby really matter when you can hardly afford food and shelter? These relevant questions are left unasked. The scene is telling of either the director's ignorance or else his pointed attempt to skew facts to make a point, and neither shines well on the movie. Juno MacGuff seems to be living in a dream world. Never mind her ridiculous vocabulary or unrealistically snappy sarcasm – her parents barely react to the news of her pregnancy, she almost effortlessly finds parents to adopt her unborn child (in a newspaper want ad, no less), the legal issues are smoothed out in the span of 30 seconds and Juno's social ostracism is hinted at but hardly explored in any meaningful way. Instead of getting a believable portrayal of teenage pregnancy, the film offers the pretentious name-dropping of hip punk bands. At one point, Juno actually says "Sonic Youth is just noise" as a biting insult. It's all a tad ridiculous. At the end of the day, perhaps none of this should interfere with enjoyment of the movie. Perhaps one should gloss over the film's aggravating biases and enjoy what is otherwise a great film. However, the fact remains that Juno passes itself as an artsy independent film about teenage pregnancy and abortion, but it is little more than a shallow, poorly considered exploitation of these important issues.