Don't See "Juno"
Movie Review: Juno
By: Grant Catton
This isn't a movie review, so much as it is a movie warning: don't see Juno. This probably flies in the face of everything you've been hearing on the street. Yes, people do seem to be "raving" about this film for some reason. In fact I just came back from the video store where people were aghast when I told them I thought the film sucked. I asked them why they liked it, no one could tell me for sure. They seem to have been duped into the same mainstream-indy movie reverie that Little Miss Sunshine induced in viewers (yes, I hated that movie too). But I'll get to that later.
Since no one can tell me exactly why they liked Juno, I'll explain to you why I didn't. For starters, it had no dramatic tension, and none of the film's themes or characters were developed to any appreciable degree. If all that sounds a little too nebulous, read below...
Brief Synopsis (With Plot Spoilers)
The film is about Juno, a 16-year old girl living in some town in Middle America. At the beginning of the film we learn (as if we didn't know from the previews) that Juno is pregnant. The father of the unborn child is Paul, a guy friend of Juno's whom she seduced one night months earlier, apparently because she was bored. In the film, we see Juno serendipitously decide not to have an abortion, but to put the child up for adoption. She meets a couple, Vanessa and Mark Loring, in a nearby town who wish to adopt her baby. She then gets to know the couple, but mostly the husband, over the ensuing months. In that time, Mark and Juno share their love of music and gory movies in a series of afternoons together, and the husband seems to get in touch with a long-forgotten side of himself. This causes him to seek divorce from his wife. In spite of the divorce, the adoption goes forward.
Meanwhile, Juno herself has relationship tribulations. She first shuns Paul's advances toward her, then decides she is in love with him shortly after she finds out he is going to prom with another, non-pregnant girl from school. Juno gives birth, the adoptive mother gets her baby, and Paul and Juno resume the friendship/romance they had before the pregnancy. Fade to black....credits.
Critical Analysis
The Plot
Within the great Pantheon of fiction plots, there is a special place for "Young Girl Gets Pregnant Unexpectedly." The movie Knocked Up comes to mind even from this year alone. There are two main reasons this plot keeps coming around; because it actually happens in real life, and it because it holds many possibilities for dramatic tension. The girl could battle with herself, her parents, the father of the child, her living situation, a health issue, whatever. All of these could provide some element of conflict that could make a story interesting. Well friends, in this film some of those conflicts come up, but in this film they are mere speed-bumps where they ought to be roadblocks.
For example, it takes a total of about four minutes of screen time for Juno to, a.) work up the courage to tell her parents she is pregnant, b.) break the news to them and tell them she is going to give the baby up for adoption, and c.) for her parents to get over it. And believe me, four minutes is being generous. How can a 90-minute film about a 16-year old girl getting pregnant spend four minutes dealing with the entire topic of telling her parents about it? Because it sucks, that's why.
The film seems to squander every possible moment for tension and conflict, as Juno breezes right through it all with a smart-assed quip and an existential shrug. Everything just seems to go her way much too easily, and the potential problems in her life are resolved much, much to quickly.
If I could step into the writers' heads for a moment, I would say we are meant to believe that Juno is so unashamedly plucky and unconventional that she always ultimately gets what she wants, and without having to sweat. That's fine for her, but that doesn't make for a very interesting character. It also looks like Juno is manipulating people, with or without realizing it. Who likes a manipulative person who never has to fight for anything?
In Fiction 101 we learn that a character shows his true mettle by how he deals with conflict. This is the very essence of fiction, and perhaps drama; a character is placed into a tough situation, and in dealing with it shows what he is made of. It's not rocket science. Still, this concept seems to have eluded the writers of this film, as I'm still not sure what Juno, the character, is made of except sarcasm and a disregard for other people's feelings.
The Characters
The main character in this movie is Juno, and there are about six other characters, total. Since the plot is almost completely linear (with a slight sub-plot dealing with the adoptive parents) Juno appears in 98% of the scenes. Okay, the movie is called Juno, I get it. Still, it would have been a little bit more interesting had they given any other character, like, say, the baby daddy, some more screen time, and even perhaps a sub-plot.
Juno herself is witty, sarcastic, nonchalant, and a bit confused. The only problem with her character is that she is too witty, sarcastic, and nonchalant, and not nearly confused and fearful enough. She simply could not, and would not exist in reality. Granted, fiction does not always have to depict reality, if it did, it would not be entertaining. However, there is something about Juno's attitude that is incongruous with the rest of her world; she sticks out of it like a sore thumb. Her irreverence does not make her unique and fascinating, but instead makes her rather drole. Furthermore, she is the only character with this kind of attitude, and with any kind of attitude, for that matter. Even her best friend seems utterly conventional, leading one to question how they got to be friends in the first place.
One obvious incongruity in Juno's character is her decision not to have an abortion. It seems that an abortion would be completely in character for someone as seemingly non-maternal, pragmatic, and uncomplicated as she is. However, she decides not to have an abortion merely because she becomes annoyed in the waiting room of the abortion clinic. That hardly seems a valid reason for brining a new life into the world. She did not debate the issue with her family or friends, and seems to undertake the idea of going through with the pregnancy as if accepting a Quarter Pounder at McDonald's when she'd actually ordered a Big Mac. If she doesn't seem to care about the decision, how can the audience?
The only other characters who appear in the movie in any meaningful way are the Lorings, the people who intend to adopt the baby. These people are painted as the typical, white bread suburban couple; their home is immaculate and decorated out of a Martha Stewart catalog, they have a series of portraits of themselves displayed throughout the house, they have eighteen different kinds of soap in the bathroom. Mark, the husband, seems cool with all this until we realize that he is a musician and used to play in a metal band. He and Juno bond over music and gory movies, and we see that he and Vanessa have little in common, and that he has submerged a whole part of himself in order to be married to her. Or rather, we are left to assume that. We are also left to assume that meeting Juno re-awakens all of his old passions for music and movies, and leads him to the conclusion that he should leave his wife.
These characters are caricatures of a bad, forced marriage between two people with nothing in common. Again, these characters are implausible. Everyone knows this kind of thing happens in real life; two people get married and realize they are not right for each other. Sure, but it seems the Lorings have been together for a while, even long enough to have been through a previous, failed attempt to adopt a child. And yet, when Juno comes into Mark's life and meets with him all of three times (or so we are shown), he realizes he must leave his marriage in the middle of an attempt to adopt Juno's kid. Sorry, but this was impossible to believe. Perhaps a bit more development of any of the characters involved would have made this easier to swallow. After all, if we know enough about any character, we can understand the motivations for what he would do, and therefore we could be convinced he would do anything. These characters, however, are about as deep as a saucer of milk, and therefore any and all of their actions come as a surprise.
Very little is made of Paul, the father of the baby, played by Michael Cera, aka the skinny guy in Superbad, and it is hard to even declare him a distinct character in this movie. It almost seemed like Paul was the exact same character he played in Superbad, minus his rotund and hyper-articulate side-kick (who actually would have provided some much-needed color into this movie). Paul is quiet, simple, accepting, and somewhat wimpy, though this does provide a charming counterpoint to Juno's constant self-indulgent prattle. Throughout the film we get no sense whatsoever of how he feels, if he feels anything about the whole situation.
In Conclusion...
This movie seems merely to be a vehicle for Ellen Page (Juno), whose promising acting resume includes the film Hard Candy. Page herself, and her not-so-peculiar brand of smug cynicism, seems to already have a distinct fanbase and, from what I can tell, she was responsible for putting most of the rear-ends into the seats for this movie. Be that as it may, her whole teenaged Garafolo pragmatism-cynicism shtick is not enough to carry this film, and it falls flat in my opinion.
This film had all of the excitement of letting the air out of a balloon; it started out full of possibility, but that possibility just hissed out of it over the course of 90 minutes. As every kid knows, sometimes you have to stretch the opening of the balloon in order to make that funny sound and get a reaction. The writers of this film apparently forgot that.
A Note On the Mainstream-Indy Movie Phenomenon (Stay With Me Just One More Moment...)
Audiences seem to give a blanket acceptance to these independent-seeming but actually very corporate mainstream films, ala Little Miss Sunshine (which, incidentally, was distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, just like Juno). It seems that any film that takes place in suburbia, features corny folk-style music, and which features lovably unusual characters in sticky situations has an open road to success at the theaters. It's as if people are so starved for something unique, that when they get it, no matter what it is they are satisfied. It just seems that kitsch is automatically hallowed as something more meaningful than it is; that the unconventional everyman is somehow automatically a sage.
Well, the barriers to entry for sage-hood are a little higher in my book, and I think these movies are treading water in the murky waters of mediocrity, but being praised as innovative and unique. Furthermore, there seems to be an element of "spoon-feeding" going on in most of them.
All that said, if it eventually amounts to mainstream acceptance of offbeat films, and if those films get better than this one, then I suppose that's a good thing. But it just seems more and more like filmmakers are pasting these films together from a catalog and mailing them in, trying still to cash-in on a trend rather than produce something original.
By: Grant Catton
This isn't a movie review, so much as it is a movie warning: don't see Juno. This probably flies in the face of everything you've been hearing on the street. Yes, people do seem to be "raving" about this film for some reason. In fact I just came back from the video store where people were aghast when I told them I thought the film sucked. I asked them why they liked it, no one could tell me for sure. They seem to have been duped into the same mainstream-indy movie reverie that Little Miss Sunshine induced in viewers (yes, I hated that movie too). But I'll get to that later.
Since no one can tell me exactly why they liked Juno, I'll explain to you why I didn't. For starters, it had no dramatic tension, and none of the film's themes or characters were developed to any appreciable degree. If all that sounds a little too nebulous, read below...
Brief Synopsis (With Plot Spoilers)
The film is about Juno, a 16-year old girl living in some town in Middle America. At the beginning of the film we learn (as if we didn't know from the previews) that Juno is pregnant. The father of the unborn child is Paul, a guy friend of Juno's whom she seduced one night months earlier, apparently because she was bored. In the film, we see Juno serendipitously decide not to have an abortion, but to put the child up for adoption. She meets a couple, Vanessa and Mark Loring, in a nearby town who wish to adopt her baby. She then gets to know the couple, but mostly the husband, over the ensuing months. In that time, Mark and Juno share their love of music and gory movies in a series of afternoons together, and the husband seems to get in touch with a long-forgotten side of himself. This causes him to seek divorce from his wife. In spite of the divorce, the adoption goes forward.
Meanwhile, Juno herself has relationship tribulations. She first shuns Paul's advances toward her, then decides she is in love with him shortly after she finds out he is going to prom with another, non-pregnant girl from school. Juno gives birth, the adoptive mother gets her baby, and Paul and Juno resume the friendship/romance they had before the pregnancy. Fade to black....credits.
Critical Analysis
The Plot
Within the great Pantheon of fiction plots, there is a special place for "Young Girl Gets Pregnant Unexpectedly." The movie Knocked Up comes to mind even from this year alone. There are two main reasons this plot keeps coming around; because it actually happens in real life, and it because it holds many possibilities for dramatic tension. The girl could battle with herself, her parents, the father of the child, her living situation, a health issue, whatever. All of these could provide some element of conflict that could make a story interesting. Well friends, in this film some of those conflicts come up, but in this film they are mere speed-bumps where they ought to be roadblocks.
For example, it takes a total of about four minutes of screen time for Juno to, a.) work up the courage to tell her parents she is pregnant, b.) break the news to them and tell them she is going to give the baby up for adoption, and c.) for her parents to get over it. And believe me, four minutes is being generous. How can a 90-minute film about a 16-year old girl getting pregnant spend four minutes dealing with the entire topic of telling her parents about it? Because it sucks, that's why.
The film seems to squander every possible moment for tension and conflict, as Juno breezes right through it all with a smart-assed quip and an existential shrug. Everything just seems to go her way much too easily, and the potential problems in her life are resolved much, much to quickly.
If I could step into the writers' heads for a moment, I would say we are meant to believe that Juno is so unashamedly plucky and unconventional that she always ultimately gets what she wants, and without having to sweat. That's fine for her, but that doesn't make for a very interesting character. It also looks like Juno is manipulating people, with or without realizing it. Who likes a manipulative person who never has to fight for anything?
In Fiction 101 we learn that a character shows his true mettle by how he deals with conflict. This is the very essence of fiction, and perhaps drama; a character is placed into a tough situation, and in dealing with it shows what he is made of. It's not rocket science. Still, this concept seems to have eluded the writers of this film, as I'm still not sure what Juno, the character, is made of except sarcasm and a disregard for other people's feelings.
The Characters
The main character in this movie is Juno, and there are about six other characters, total. Since the plot is almost completely linear (with a slight sub-plot dealing with the adoptive parents) Juno appears in 98% of the scenes. Okay, the movie is called Juno, I get it. Still, it would have been a little bit more interesting had they given any other character, like, say, the baby daddy, some more screen time, and even perhaps a sub-plot.
Juno herself is witty, sarcastic, nonchalant, and a bit confused. The only problem with her character is that she is too witty, sarcastic, and nonchalant, and not nearly confused and fearful enough. She simply could not, and would not exist in reality. Granted, fiction does not always have to depict reality, if it did, it would not be entertaining. However, there is something about Juno's attitude that is incongruous with the rest of her world; she sticks out of it like a sore thumb. Her irreverence does not make her unique and fascinating, but instead makes her rather drole. Furthermore, she is the only character with this kind of attitude, and with any kind of attitude, for that matter. Even her best friend seems utterly conventional, leading one to question how they got to be friends in the first place.
One obvious incongruity in Juno's character is her decision not to have an abortion. It seems that an abortion would be completely in character for someone as seemingly non-maternal, pragmatic, and uncomplicated as she is. However, she decides not to have an abortion merely because she becomes annoyed in the waiting room of the abortion clinic. That hardly seems a valid reason for brining a new life into the world. She did not debate the issue with her family or friends, and seems to undertake the idea of going through with the pregnancy as if accepting a Quarter Pounder at McDonald's when she'd actually ordered a Big Mac. If she doesn't seem to care about the decision, how can the audience?
The only other characters who appear in the movie in any meaningful way are the Lorings, the people who intend to adopt the baby. These people are painted as the typical, white bread suburban couple; their home is immaculate and decorated out of a Martha Stewart catalog, they have a series of portraits of themselves displayed throughout the house, they have eighteen different kinds of soap in the bathroom. Mark, the husband, seems cool with all this until we realize that he is a musician and used to play in a metal band. He and Juno bond over music and gory movies, and we see that he and Vanessa have little in common, and that he has submerged a whole part of himself in order to be married to her. Or rather, we are left to assume that. We are also left to assume that meeting Juno re-awakens all of his old passions for music and movies, and leads him to the conclusion that he should leave his wife.
These characters are caricatures of a bad, forced marriage between two people with nothing in common. Again, these characters are implausible. Everyone knows this kind of thing happens in real life; two people get married and realize they are not right for each other. Sure, but it seems the Lorings have been together for a while, even long enough to have been through a previous, failed attempt to adopt a child. And yet, when Juno comes into Mark's life and meets with him all of three times (or so we are shown), he realizes he must leave his marriage in the middle of an attempt to adopt Juno's kid. Sorry, but this was impossible to believe. Perhaps a bit more development of any of the characters involved would have made this easier to swallow. After all, if we know enough about any character, we can understand the motivations for what he would do, and therefore we could be convinced he would do anything. These characters, however, are about as deep as a saucer of milk, and therefore any and all of their actions come as a surprise.
Very little is made of Paul, the father of the baby, played by Michael Cera, aka the skinny guy in Superbad, and it is hard to even declare him a distinct character in this movie. It almost seemed like Paul was the exact same character he played in Superbad, minus his rotund and hyper-articulate side-kick (who actually would have provided some much-needed color into this movie). Paul is quiet, simple, accepting, and somewhat wimpy, though this does provide a charming counterpoint to Juno's constant self-indulgent prattle. Throughout the film we get no sense whatsoever of how he feels, if he feels anything about the whole situation.
In Conclusion...
This movie seems merely to be a vehicle for Ellen Page (Juno), whose promising acting resume includes the film Hard Candy. Page herself, and her not-so-peculiar brand of smug cynicism, seems to already have a distinct fanbase and, from what I can tell, she was responsible for putting most of the rear-ends into the seats for this movie. Be that as it may, her whole teenaged Garafolo pragmatism-cynicism shtick is not enough to carry this film, and it falls flat in my opinion.
This film had all of the excitement of letting the air out of a balloon; it started out full of possibility, but that possibility just hissed out of it over the course of 90 minutes. As every kid knows, sometimes you have to stretch the opening of the balloon in order to make that funny sound and get a reaction. The writers of this film apparently forgot that.
A Note On the Mainstream-Indy Movie Phenomenon (Stay With Me Just One More Moment...)
Audiences seem to give a blanket acceptance to these independent-seeming but actually very corporate mainstream films, ala Little Miss Sunshine (which, incidentally, was distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, just like Juno). It seems that any film that takes place in suburbia, features corny folk-style music, and which features lovably unusual characters in sticky situations has an open road to success at the theaters. It's as if people are so starved for something unique, that when they get it, no matter what it is they are satisfied. It just seems that kitsch is automatically hallowed as something more meaningful than it is; that the unconventional everyman is somehow automatically a sage.
Well, the barriers to entry for sage-hood are a little higher in my book, and I think these movies are treading water in the murky waters of mediocrity, but being praised as innovative and unique. Furthermore, there seems to be an element of "spoon-feeding" going on in most of them.
All that said, if it eventually amounts to mainstream acceptance of offbeat films, and if those films get better than this one, then I suppose that's a good thing. But it just seems more and more like filmmakers are pasting these films together from a catalog and mailing them in, trying still to cash-in on a trend rather than produce something original.
Comments
well...gotta give it to you there....but she was pretty cute, honest to blog.
lighten up you grizzled old man! just because there wasn't any hunting, incest, nudity, doesn't mean it can't be entertaining in its charming sophmoric way.
you're looking for bran in a cupcake.