Napoleon Dynamite for Girls

"Oh, you think you're hot sh#t 'cause you get to
sit over there and play pictionary? Well guess what?
My five year old daughter could do that and let me tell you,
she's not the brightest bulb in the tanning bed.
So until you have your own kid, why don't you just
go back to nightschool in Manteno and get a real job."

--Bren MacGuff (Allison Janney), Juno

Most comedies make fun of the misfit, treating the outsider as an oddball to be tripped down a flight of stairs. Some go the other way. They celebrate the misfit and make fun of the society too dumb to see that they're the joke. Such films are a breath of fresh air, and in case you haven't noticed it yet, I'm getting high off the fumes.

Juno is a great little comedy about a 16-year-old who gets pregnant and decides to give the baby up for adoption. If a premise like that doesn't blow you away, maybe it's because it's not the premise that makes this film but the tongue-in-cheek, satirical, character study of everybody involved. In fact, the best thing in this film is a single performance, by Ellen Page (as Juno MacGuff). Her playfully jaundiced, half-emo, silly-but-shrewd vocalizations of the situation and the players were as fresh in 2007 as Billy Bob Thornton's "uh-huh"s in Slingblade.

Director Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking) goes for a rhythm that feels almost cartoonish without sacrificing verisimilitude. Each scene is like a series of panels in a comic book as Juno goes from "dirty deed" to a personal journey filled with laughs and tears. There's a telling scene, about 15 minutes in, when Juno's father, Mac (J.K. Simmons) gets the bad news and lets her have it with a verbal two-by-four. "Juno, I thought you were the kind of girl who knew when to say when." Her response, through tears, is classic: "I really don't know what kind of girl I am."

Part of the fun of this film is in figuring out who these people are. Who is this 16-year-old who got pregnant? Who is Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), the boy who "knocked her up?" Who are Juno's parents, Mac and Bren? (Allison Janney) Who are Vanessa and Robert Loring (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman), the couple who are looking for a child?

The miracle of Juno is not that it "conquered the taboo subject of teen pregnancy" (yawn) but that it does so through the eyes of its quirkiest character, the girl who sees so much of her world as both absurd and wonderful. To Juno, for example, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) is the most gorgeous thing alive, even if he hardly grunts more than a syllable at a go. That she hunted and stalked this prey is all the more amazing when you consider his gawky, almost effeminate physique. His response to the big news is more than just surprise. It's right up there with stupefying silence, not so much disappointment or wonder so much as astonishment, as if he'd stepped in something and was still processing what exactly he had caked all over his feet.

And then there's Mac (J.K. Simmons), crusty, predictably non-plus'd by his daughter's predicament, but also forgiving and more than a little dorky. Is this how sixteen-year-old girls see their father? As the father of a seventeen-year-old, I'd have to say, "Yes."

The first hints at condemnation come from Juno's stepmother, Bren (Allison Janney), a Jesus freak who doesn't hesitate to weigh in on all matters moral. But here's an early indication of how the script, by Diablo Cody, paints portraits rather than caricatures. Bren doesn't hesitate to chime in about how wrong this situation is, but she is also the first to defend Juno when a loose-lipped lab technician lets slip a personal judgment. Asking the woman what her function is (lab technician), Bren says, "Well, I'm a nail technician and I think we should both stick to what we know."

This is a film where compassion and poignancy coexist but not always where you'd think. It's a film that wanders through the abortion debate as recklessly and indifferently as Juno herself who crosses a solitary pro-life activist, Su Chin (Valerie Tian) on her way to the abortion clinic. We've come to expect, from films like Citizen Ruth, that a moral choice like whether to abort will be fraught with lots of strong opinions. This is where Juno could have savaged the Pro-Lifers by making them even more cartoonish than some of them already are. Instead, Su Chin disarms us because, as someone who struggles to speak English, she presents the innocence of those who feel they are doing God's errand by telling us what not to do. It's a satirical comment that her resistance is a futile effort, a joke really, but when Juno makes her fateful decision, she gives credit to Su Chin, not for bullying her or blocking her, but for throwing out a fact that made a difference in her perspective.

On the other hand, compassion comes up short when it comes to the Lorings, the perfect suburban couple who bring in their lawyer to negotiate terms and whose smiling demeanor hides their own well-hidden shortcomings. Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) is "perfect" but so controlling, you have to wonder whether she tolerates "wire hangers." Her husband Robert (Jason Bates) is so much cooler, but where do you draw the line between easygoing and indifferent?

One of the great things about Juno is that there are no absolutes. This is not a film with easy heroes or villains. Everybody has a reason for feeling the way they do, and everybody is also at least partly full of crap. Nobody really knows what they're doing, but decisions still have to be made - and even the best of strategies is a far cry from paradise. Juno is never preachy. In fact, the central issue in the story is not whether a high-school student should abort or adopt out. It's the issue that haunts Juno herself: whether she can be sure that any two people are destined to stay together over the long run, a question Juno thinks about when she looks at Vaness and Mark, and when she finds herself staring at Paulie Bleeker's gangly legs.

This is a funny, poignant, film - though how funny or poignant may depend on your expectations going in. I'll be blunt: Jason Reitman's direction is a bit plodding and pedestrian. There's an assumption, going in, that this is outrageous stuff - and for the right audience, it may well be. I found the film lovably fun, precisely because the character of Juno - and the characters who act as her foils - are sympathetically twisted. Juno's one-liners are great, and for a certain group of girls who fit the emo fringe, this movie is the second coming of the son of God. I kid you not. Girls like Juno wax rhapsodic about this film, right down to the soundtrack which, to some, may be incoherent blather, but to them is like the singing of the angels. My daughter doesn't run with that crowd, so she was indifferent, but I've had lengthy conversations with girls who felt as if their story was finally being told. Juno may well be the Napoleon Dynamite for girls, and if so, things could be a lot worse.

This is a funny film, maybe not to sixteen-year-old boys, but loaded with dialogue that is so sharp you could cut boxes with it. You have to meet it at least halfway to get the most out of it, but it's definitely one of the best comedies of the year.

P.S. A thoughtful reader recently questioned the aptness of comparing Juno to Napoleon Dynamite. After all, Napoleon lacks social skills while Juno is so highly verbal. To me, this is not uncommon. Boys and girls tend to respond differently to the same adolescent identity crisis. Social outcasts (or those who perceive themselves as such) are at odds with a world that rejects them. If some boys refuse to grow up, some girls go a little batty. The emo/scream-o phenomenon reflects one such response. To me, Juno's status as the school preggo aggravates issues that were there before "the night of the chair."

In both films, the misfit is normalized by describing the world through their eyes. Napoleon's antisocial attitude - which might make him the "troubled teen" in a different film - is justified a bit by giving him good reasons to look at his world through jaundiced eyes. His brother wants to be a cage fighter? He lives with his grandmother? He gets called Peter Pan by Rex, inventor of Rex Kwan Do? His only peer is a Mexican immigrant who is also the bottom rung of the social ladder? His only love interest is a girl with a pony tail on the side of her head? His only male role model is "Uncle Rico?"

No wonder this kid has what Tony Soprano would call "agitas."

The same goes for Juno, though perhaps her isolation from the world is reflected in sarcasm rather than silence interrupted by incoherent grunts (another boy/girl distinction). That verbal diarrhea she gets is hardly neutral. Much of it, while hilarious, is softly aggressive. Some of what she says undoubtedly sounds like a girl version of Jay from Clerks. But just as much of it is laced with a sprinkle of hostility - as if she's afraid others are making fun of her so she gets the dig in first. And consider how the film turns her world into a Turkish bazaar. The love of her life is a lanky, awkward, puff who barely grunts "Hello." Her father is the Maytag Repairman. Her stepmother is a Jesus freak. One of her teachers is a pedophile. Everybody at school is caught up in some narcissistic obsession - like the ever-present track team - that must be so So IMPORTANT. Even Vanessa and Robert are ridiculous - with Vanessa's need to control everything and Robert's inability to figure out who he is or what he wants.

I think both films celebrate weirdness, even if Juno's is partially a result of a socially-awkward "accident." Both are highly satirical of the world surrounding a high-school student who doesn't necessarily want to "fit in." Both are about eccentrics. Some of the people who "got" Napoleon Dynamite may not "get" Juno, and vice versa, but misfits don't necessarily understand other misfits. The point is that we're looking at an alternate viewpoint. And in both films, the satire - while sometimes savage - is bathed in a forgiving glow. Both films may well be Wes Anderson for teens.