Juno’s got more Oscar whispers going than most films right now, and there’s a lot of Academy Award talk this time of year. Perhaps this Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking) picture offers a little levity in an intense and often brutal list of Oscar nominees. There are tiny spurts of brutality, but more verbally from ex-stripper (and blogger extraodinaire) Diablo Cody’s writing.
From its opening scenes Juno is unabashedly stylized. Ellen Page’s (Juno) dialogue is loaded up with one-liner zingers that are distractingly witty. At times her character seems to suffer from Kevin Smith syndrome, only instead of quick lipped meditations on anal sex and mall shopping, Juno seems to verbally cock an eyebrow at peoples eccentricities and flaws. It may be a little more fresh than Jersey Girl, but it can be equally distracting. Her soliloquy on China giving away babies like free Ipods is funny, but feels contrived.
Much like the snappy dialogue, the soundtrack is a little too precious. It seems like Juno can’t hop into her dad’s minivan wearing an ironic vintage T-shirt without a twee assault from Moldy Peaches, or Belle and Sebastian.
These hip dressings, only serve to detract from a heartfelt movie about a pregnant teen. When she doesn’t sound like she’s giving a pre-Late Show Conan O’Brien routine, Page is both believable and likeable. Michael Cera (Superbad) carries a disarming naivete as her track running boyfriend. The super-yuppie couple (played by Jennifer Garner, and Jason Bateman) hoping to adopt Juno’s unwanted baby, have a life-like conflict of their own. Bateman plays a thirty-something who is all grown up, but still wants to rock and roll. The subtle sexual tension that develops between him and Juno is almost disturbingly natural, in contrast to Garner’s character who is drawn like an aspiring Stepford wife.
There are no easy answers to teenage pregnancy, or martial angst for that matter and luckily the film doesn’t pretend to have them. It’s a common sense embodied by Juno when she tells her father, “I’ve been out all day dealing with things well above my maturity level.” With a wry, c’est la vie kind of humor the movie manages to occasionally break through its stylish tendencies and show how people grin through unfortunate circumstances.
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