So, is “Juno” this year’s “Little Miss Sunshine”? I.E., is it the little indie film that could that will transcend it’s indie-comedy genre and make it to the big Oscar show like ‘Sunshine’ did two years prior?
That’s a larger question for later. Directed by Jason Reitman (“Thank You For Not Smoking”) and hot screenwriter du jour Diablo Cody (see the various stories in EW and NYTimes for fawning praise plus the tattoo ‘I’m now single’ story), the teenage comedy “Juno” has high hopes and expectations now foisted upon it.
There’s also a lot of hype, the indie film took some top honors at the Toronto Film Festival and the Rome Film Festival (it was named Best Film at the latter).
And the damn hype, it taints and colors everything doesn’t it? Not if you don’t let it (but it really takes some clearing the decks effort).
Played with charming insouciance by the revelatory Ellen Page, Juno MacGuff is the precocious, preternaturally sarcastic and whipsmart 16-year-old who gets knocked up by her innocuous, sad and awkward best male friend (played by a bemused Michael Cera, who’s thankfully not really pulling his exact Bob Newhart-y shtick this time).
The wisecracking Juno unsuccessfully attempts to get an abortion, but can’t go through with it and decides to have the baby and breaks the news to her lenient, yet caring parents (hilariously played by J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney, the latter being a near tour de force).
Juno and her teacher-loving carefree best friend (played by the wonderful, up-and-comer Olivia Thirlby; see 2oo8’s “Snow Angels” by David Gordon Green) cook up and adoption plan and start looking through the local Pennysaver, trying to find suitable parents for her unborn child.
The yuppie couple – Jennifer Garner plays the tightly-wound super-yuppie mommy wannabee and Jason Bateman plays the emasculated, laid back, former grunge-era musician who’s now recording sellout jingles in his playroom to make money – are seemingly perfect on the outside, but as the story progresses, cracks start to show in their overly-perfect veneer.
“Juno” is probably all the things you expect it to be, snarky, quirky, intelligent, sharp-tongued, quick-witted, cute and heavy on the irony – it’s all gums and spit, furiously firing off complex lines of script like indifferent, spunky bullets. However, all the calculated self-aware clever quips (the overwritten teen-lingo which is sometimes painful) and in-the-know pop culture references almost threaten to undo the films surprisingly tender and sweet charms. The keyword however is almost; thankfully a fine line is drawn and the aforementioned touching moments act as a nice counterbalance to some of the colorful bon mots and overly precious one-liners.
But it’s too sweet, lively, funny and blithe to be annoying. These are only minor quibbles. Cleverness aside, “Juno” is winsome and magnetic with an incredibly lovable heart. [B+/A- depending on your mood]
Musical Moments:
There are plenty. As mentioned a million times Cera and Page perform the Moldy Peaches’ “Anyone Else But You” in one of the film’s many, surprisingly sweet moment (the Peaches reunited for the first time in several years at the Los Angeles premiere earlier last week); the trapped in the ‘90s alt-scene Jason Batemen tries to impress a classic-rock/punk fan in Juno with Sonic Youth’s cover of the Carpenters’ “Superstar,” and she consistently rattles off her favorites like Iggy & The Stooges, Mott The Hoople and other classic punk and rock acts. The score by Mateo Messina and the Kimya Dawson-heavy songs are perfectly plaintive.
Oscar Considerations
So is Juno this year’s “Little Miss Sunshine,” like everyone keeps mentioning in every piece ever written about the film? (three cheers for originality). In a way, yes. Is it bound to be called an over-rated comedy not worthy of glorious Oscar consideration? Probably. Is it the little movie that could that people will be rooting for? Yes. Is it a pretty good movie with Oscar hopes mostly because it’s a bad year for more classical-Academy fare? Yes.
That’s not to slander Juno, obviously it’s a solid film, but there are similarities it on how its perceived now and how it might be perceived after this year’s Oscars are long gone (“Little Miss Sunshine” is nice and all, but looking back on it, the film certainly feels like light, indie fare more than it does worthy of a Best Picture nod. Greg Kinnear for one should be banned from film existence, who let that guy in?). Whether it gets the landslide surprise nominations (or any) that ‘Sunshine’ did remains to be seen (ok, Ellen Page is prolly a solid bet), but either way it means very little in the end whether “Juno” is a good or bad film (out of all critics, Oscar is bit of a puzzling bet since they tend to favor more mainstream, lowest common denominator fare). Essentially we’re saying, see it now and try not to hate on it later if it gets a shit-ton of nominations (though our hunch is this won’t happen).
According to Variety, “Juno”‘s limited release, per-screen opening did extremely well.
