Movie Maven

Yes, the search for Thenextlittlemisssunshine is officially over, and the winner is Juno.

It would have been really cool if I could have played the caustic film critic, and denounced Juno in all of its mousy brown glory, said it's trite, it's too precious for its own good, it's annoying, etc.

But, dammit all, I can't. It's adorable. And not in an annoying way, either. It's genuinely sweet, and funny, and well-executed and honest. It has a marvelous cast, and a bittersweet ending and a fragility that makes you think if you blow on it too hard it will burst into little dandelion spores and float away on the breeze.

But again, NOT in an annoying way.

How Jason Reitman managed to achieve this, I'll never know. At the beginning I fretted, for it seemed like Reitman was going to make it the Quippy Show with Ellen Page. "I'm going to be so quippy and wise-cracking it's going to BLOW YOUR MIND!" But it seemed like about a quarter of the way through, Reitman and his cast loosened up, stretched their legs, and created something genuine. Something that sounded like how real people talk and associate with each other.

You all know the plot: after a halting, awkward bout of lovemaking, precocious 16-year-old Juno (Page) becomes pregnant by her best friend Paulie (Michael Cera, every nerdy girl's crush.) She decides to give up the child for adoption to cool Mark and frigid Vanessa (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), a wealthy couple who might not be what they first appeared to be.

It's hard to get around the fact that the film does romanticize teen pregnancy in a few ways. As a girl who saw more than one round belly waddle down the aisle at her high school graduation, the choices that people make in these situations are far more fraught, and far more emotional than the movie would have you believe. What it does do a good job on is the stigma attached to teen-aged girls who get pregnant, the looks and sense of shame hailed down on girls who made a bad decision. There is a sort of devastation in the way the school receptionist witheringly eyes Juno's swollen belly as she signs off on a doctor's slip. But in the end, Juno triumphs. The divine forces of retribution (also know as the Lifetime channel) do not wreck their havoc upon her life. Juno is no "fallen woman."

The ending is a bit problematic from the audience's standpoint, at least in my personal experience. Without giving too much away, I thought it ended quite happily, or as happily as the circumstances would have allowed. A few of the friends I saw it with, however, said that it depressed them, though they weren't too sure why. It may have to do with the views each of us takes regarding teenage pregnancy and adoption, as well as child-rearing in general. But rest assured that this film is, as a whole, a comedy, and a lighter approach to a very serious matter. The philosophy of the film may be summed up with Juno's comment to Vanessa upon meeting her at the mall:

"The kids at school are constantly grabbing my stomach- they call me the cautionary whale."