Juno

Review By: Michael Dance
michaelmdance@gmail.com

The first five minute of Juno left me groaning. The folk/indie/emo soundtrack was one thing, and then as soon as the credit sequence ends, we’re treated to Rainn Wilson making a cameo as a small-town convenience store clerk who spouts dialogue so insincerely “clever” that I wanted to strangle myself.

Oh no, I thought. For the next three months I’m going to have to explain to everyone why I hate this movie while everyone else loves it. Just like Napoleon Dynamite.

But, fantastically, the dialogue tones down a bit after the dangerous opening - still whip-smart and quirky, but somehow sweeter. We are introduced to Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page), a sixteen-year-old girl who finds out she’s pregnant, and the people in her world: her dad and stepmom (J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney), her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby), and her other friend, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), the father.

At first, abortion is the only option, but Juno gets cold feet and apparently decides that, like Knocked Up, that would make the movie way too short. So she grits her teeth, tells her parents, and decides to give it up for adoption to a yuppie couple who put an ad in the paper, played by Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman.

All of this is just the setup. And in and of itself, it’s not necessarily a setup that has you rushing to the theater. But Juno, directed by Jason Reitman, is wonderful, thanks largely to its charming screenplay by newcomer Diablo Cody.

The story is surprisingly engrossing, and goes a few places I wouldn’t have predicted – it keeps toying with how you should feel about the adoptive parents, for example, and the journey is continually surprising while still sticking true to the characters. As such, the movie feels legitimately unique even as it follows a few familiar coming-of-age beats. Your first inclination might be to think that Juno acts and talks too smart for her age, but despite her wit, like all teenagers, she thinks she’s a lot smarter than she actually is.

Juno also achieves that perfect balance between funny and moving; it’s often hilarious, with a few pitch-perfect running jokes, but I came perilously close to crying during the final scenes, and a quick look around the internet tells me I’m not the only one. I’m a sucker for honest portraits of high school kids, and this gets a lot of details just right – girls flirting with ugly teachers; Paulie’s understated awkwardness; the infuriating, constant use of the phrase “sexually active.”

Good writing, of course, allows the characters to drive the plot instead of the other way around,