Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
1/12/08
OK,
let me be the first to declare the Sundance Revolution over. The
generation of filmmakers first cultivated, then inspired by the products
of Robert Redford's institute and its' companion film festival turned Hollywood
upside down and created a fully functioning and highly profitable set of
shadow studios that specialize in “independent” films. What the whole
Indie thing is supposed to mean to us is that we're getting the individualized
visions of people with diverse and exciting backgrounds who have things
to say that the average Hollywood movie can't get its' head out of its'
Spago's menu long enough to imagine, let alone film. But after seeing
Juno, the much-hyped and quite entertaining teen pregnancy comedy
with its' wonderful performances and first-rate screenplay by former exotic
dancer Diablo Cody, I can't shake the thought that it would have been better,
amazing even, if only it could have shaken the indie cliché manner
in which it was filmed. Alert the media: those Miramax kids
are now The Man.
Juno
MacGuff (Ellen Page) is a smart, witty 16-year-old with a problem:
she's pregnant thanks to that one time she had sex with her friend Paulie
Bleeker (Michael Cera). Juno's first instinct is to get an abortion,
but after a protester tells her fetuses have fingernails and the clinic
turns out to be some slacking circle of Hell, she just can't go through
with it. So it's on to the Penny Saver and its' ads for couples seeking
to adopt. There, she finds Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) and Mark Loring
(Jason Batman), a seemingly perfect couple driven by her all-consuming
desire to be a Mommy. Juno's Dad Mac (J K Simmons) and Stepmom Bren
(Allison Janney) are less than thrilled, but stand by her, as does her
best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby). Now come the big issues:
can Mark continue to suppress his own dreams to become a Dad? And
did Juno really just have sex with Bleeker because it was either that or
watch The Blair Witch Project again on TV... or was it something
more?
Juno
has a lot of things going on story-wise, and cleverly hides a big-hearted
populism behind a lot of hipper-than-thou teen attitude. Juno herself
is a great character, spouting quotable lines by the dozens, but the movie's
smart enough to know that making her always right just because she's the
most interesting person in the room would be the wrong way to go.
Instead, our teen hero just muddles through, leaning on a great support
system and learning a lot about people as she goes. Page is tremendous:
it's not only a great star turn, but also a full-bodied performance:
Juno hides a lot of insecurity and plain old confusion about the ways of
the world behind those quips, and she always makes that clear to us.
She's aided by a strong supporting cast led by Simmons, Janney and Thirlby,
all of whom find new angles on their stock roles thanks in part to Cody's
refusal to write them stock things to do and say. Neither she nor
he is as fortunate with Cera's Bleeker, who is an off-the-rack Indie Kid,
and never showed me that second level Juno keeps telling people he has.
*****SPOILER
ALERT*****Perhaps most interesting, though, are the Lorings.
When we first meet them, everything seems clear: Mark is a super-cool
guy we'd all like to pal around with if only he wasn't being held back
by his stick-in-the-mud wife, the vaguely odd and certainly dull Vanessa.
He and Juno become closer and closer as she finds reasons to stop by the
house, and for a while I imagined that she'd “set him free” in some way.
But what happens instead is Cody's greatest bit of screenwriting slight-of-hand:
just as we're learning that Vanessa is as steadfast and true as she is
unlikely to get a joke, we see that Mark's storage room full of comic books
and CDs is all the oily loser's got going for him. It's Juno's
stealthy moral that while being cool is great and all, it's mostly the
Squares who keep society running. As the embodiment of strong, good-hearted
blandness, Garner is remarkable (watch her in that pure gold scene where
she feels the baby kick through Juno's stomach), and Bateman's found his
best movie role to date as her neato, good-time quitter of a husband.*****END
OF SPOILERS*****
All
this said, I had gone into Juno expecting big things out of director Jason
Reitman, whose debut (2006's Thank You For Smoking) is likely the
best directed comedy of this century. But in choosing to filter Cody's
wonderfully heartfelt screenplay through the Indie 101 sausage grinder,
he's actually diluted, rather than strengthened, its' impact. We
all know the playbook by now: passive long shots of a series of houses
as people walk/run/ride from one end of the frame to the other, pervasive
folkish music, preferably all by the same artist (in this case Kimya Dawson
of The Moldy Peaches), and animation and hand-drawn art wherever you find
room for it. The funny thing is, this style was invented to
put across a generational ennui, and Juno (both the character and
the movie) never shuts up long enough for lengthy musical montages to be
appropriate. I have to say, I hated those songs, as much for the
way they're shoehorned into the film as their actual content. Killing
time with music is not a superior artistic decision just because it's not
Sweet Home Alabama or whatever classic rock catalog titles will fill the
soundtrack of the next Matthew McConaughey comedy: musical montages
in films filled with fun, talkative characters are just lazy filmmaking!
That said, I'll give Reitman his due: both of his features have been
tremendously well-acted, and I'm sure that's not a coincidence.
One
thing that is unique about Juno is its' fearlessness in talking
about teen pregnancy at a time when so many in the country would prefer
that even the biological possibility never be disclosed. While the
movie is PG-13 and has no on-screen sexual content, its' talk is very frank
and parents should be aware that if they're going to see it with their
kids, it's going to inspire a lot of discussion. Of course, that's
not such a bad thing, especially about a movie that's so supportive of
adoption, an alternative that rarely gets any play in the media.
Juno
is a fun, thoughtful and ultimately touching film that should entertain
both its' hero's contemporaries and those past the age of having to worry
about whether teens have sex or just watch The Blair Witch Project.
It should inspire more than its' share of bumper stickers and may have
launched a great new screenwriting career for Diablo Cody. But it
is something of a step backwards for its' talented director, and a signal
that when it comes to independent filmmaking, it might be time for everything
old to become new again: the Sundance Generation's new tricks are
starting to get a little old. |
