Juno

Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: Ellen Page, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney, Jennifer Garner, Michael Cera, J. K. Simmons
Writer: Diablo Cody
Runtime: 96 minutes

Plot: Juno (Page) is a sixteen-year-old girl who gets pregnant and decides to keep the baby. Unsure of herself (despite appearances), she snubs her boyfriend, Paulie (Cera), but enjoys the support of her parents, Mac and Bren (Simmons and Janney). She decides to offer the child for adoption to a well-to-do couple, Mark and Vanessa Loring (Bateman and Garner).

Juno is a superior follow-up to Reitman's creative, clever, and memorable Thankyou For Smoking. Further proof, then, that the apple has fallen far from the tree and rolled a good way as well. (His father is Ivan, whose rap sheet includes such vacuous atrocities as Twins, Ghostbusters II, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, Junior, and Six Days Seven Nights.)

You can see why some people have been offended by this film: teenage sex is depicted as perhaps even more commonplace than it is in real life; a slightly cavalier attitude is taken to the Serious Issues of teenage pregnancy and adoption; Juno’s parents and the Lorings are hardly great rôle-models; Juno herself is unspeakably cool, and therefore risks being emulated by real-life teenagers, whose messy problems are unlikely to be magically resolved like they are in movie-land.

But this is a comedy, and (dare I say it?) the pregnancy is in a sense just the MacGuffin. Yes, if I had teenage children, I’d want to have a serious talk to them about this film. But for those of us who know that romcoms work because they bear only fleeting and periodic resemblance to reality, Juno is a very satisfying hour and a half.

Credit must go in the first instance to Cody’s script. As we’re introduced to the main characters in the first few minutes, we’re treated to a feast of cool-as-Clerks dialogue and laugh-out-loud one-liners. Beyond that, the film has an extraordinarily powerful emotional arc, guaranteeing plenty of unseemly guffawing and messy blubbering. What more do you want?

Secondly, the casting is pitch-perfect. If Michael Cera can never break his lovable-geek mould, at least it was put to good use here; Bateman and Garner are so good as the childless couple, childish and neurotic respectively; Simmons and Janney are superb as Juno’s parents. In particular, Janney has enough warmth to make Bren sympathetic, as well as the steel to make some of her acerbic Blackadder-sharp put-downs believable.

And then there is Page in the title rôle. Of course, she first wooed the fanboy in me as X-Men’s Kitty Pryde (a.k.a. Shadowcat). She then wowed me with her disturbingly psychotic turn in Hard Candy. Here, she is spot-on: she is perfectly able to hold together those aspects of Juno’s character which would be impossible in real life. She’s witty and sassy enough to carry the too-knowing dialogue, and cute and vulnerable enough to make us believe in Juno’s insecurity and the whole coming-of-age drama. Definitely Someone Worth Watching.

Finally, the film is hugely enhanced by its off-beat soundtrack. There is a string of kooky and adorably charming songs, led by the eccentric vocals of Kimya Dawson. It’s a magical accompaniment to the film, and the first thing I did when I got home was to buy it on iTunes.

Verdict: Not the best, but certainly one of the most enjoyable films I’ve seen in a long time, with laughter and tears à gogo. Rewatching it with Suzanne has convinced me to bump its rating up a star.