At first, I’m all like, how come there were never girls around like Juno when I was in high school? I mean, not pregnant, because I was educated by stern Catholics, but quick-witted, fun-loving, sassily independent girls, possibly in possession of telephones shaped like hamburgers. And then I’m like, hold on, there totally were girls like her then. They dressed in weird clothes, excelled in art, music and English, and had penchants for music their college-age siblings passed down, like My Bloody Valentine or whatever, because twee had yet to be invented.
Damn you, Mr. Friel. Your health class taught me about gonorrhea and how I’d most certainly contract it should I premaritally insert my penis into a vagina, but you never mentioned the part about how a shy boy could approach these weird girls and just hang out with them, what with them being so quick-witted and fun-loving and all.
Juno’s best friend Bleeker (Michael Cera) has caught on to this whole world of odd girls, so much so that he impregnates her, while chewing orange Tic Tacs, no less. His own gawkiness and frequent cross country getup is spot on for those of us who may have been similarily gawky and participated in cross country at one time.
I’ve noticed some of the Juno backlash centers around the dialogue, specifically how no one actually talks in the calculated yet fluid way that Juno and the other characters do. Well, that’s great, because if I wanted to listen to the way people talk in real life, I’d spend my weekends on the M60 bus. Diablo Cody’s bitingly funny, slang-slinging screenplay is consistently quirky (yet more funny to me than the self-consciously quirky screenplays of, say, Wes Anderson). Also it’s touching when it needs to be and, just before crossing into schmaltz, quickly self-corrects. For instance, I like how the charmingly cliché line of Juno’s dad (J.K. Simmons) appears in the trailer (“the best thing you can do is to find a person who loves you for exactly what you are”) when in the film, it’s followed by the line, “Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person will still think that the sun shines out your ass.”
Ellen Page as Juno is outstanding and I like that she’s surrounded with sorta-familiar but definitely not played-out supporting-role character-actors from various TV series. Putting her sharp features to effective use as an overachieving yuppie who’s unable to have a baby but has dibs on Juno’s, Jennifer Garner delivers an heartfelt performance, or at least one worlds better than on that show where she ran around in bad wigs, fighting terrorists. (Although I’ve never known of any woman who’s expecting who cites What to Expect When You’re Expecting-style tidbits as much as her character does; doesn’t this woman talk to her mother or have a single child-rearing friend?)
Anyway, I dub Juno “Jason’s Feel-Good Movie of the Year.”