People Don’t Preach

In the incredibly buzzed-about Juno, the film’s title character is a 16-year-old with a smart mouth and a dumb problem: she’s pregnant – and she’s keeping her baby.

It’s fall, and Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) confronts her unplanned pregnancy by her classmate Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) the same she does everything else: with unparalleled sass and precocious wisdom.

She figures she’s “ill-equipped” to become a mother at such a young age, and thus decides, “I could like, have this baby, and give it to someone who like, totally needs it.”

With the help of her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby), Juno browses the local Penny Saver and finds the right people in suburban couple Mark and Vanessa (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), who long to adopt.

And so Juno explores the next nine months in the life of, as Juno, the seasons, and the tone of the film change.

All Juno wants to know is that her baby’s going to be a-OK. She needs, as she says, “to know that it’s possible that two people can stay happy together forever.” Only then will she feel comfortable, really, with her never-more-certain decision.

There’s hope in that answer, after all.

Parenthesis: Juno was directed by Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking) from a script by stripper-turned-Hollywood darling Diablo Cody. The film starts out laugh-out-loud funny, but it quickly and naturally becomes a bit more serious. This is great sign that this is a mature story, albeit an imperfect one because these people aren’t perfect – they’re real; they feel, love, and mess up real.

So back to Juno and her arrangement with Mark and Vanessa….

To say that this pregnancy will change their lives forever is an understatement. As Juno carries on, she realizes that on rare occasions, two people can be happy together forever – and that she already may have found that someone…that someone who gets her. But Mark and Vanessa come to find out they haven’t gotten each other in some time, and that they’re moving in different directions.

There were laughs aplenty in this film, but there was also poignancy that was…unexpected.

Page is fantastic and worthy of all the praise coming her way, although I wouldn’t call her performance a revelation (see her in Hardy Candy for one of those).

It was Garner, though, who stuck with me the most. Her character is so deeply flawed, I couldn’t help but wonder what would become of her once the credits rolled.

I wish Cody had delved more into what this character represents instead of focusing her energies on making her film such a hipster-y feel-gooder. It would’ve felt more real.

My Rating ***

Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures.