Juno - "It all started with a chair"

I expected Juno to be another wacky Napoleon Dynamite meets Superbad comedy and I’m glad for once that I went against my pre-judgment and watched the bloody thing. It’s rather good and worthy of the Best Picture nomination it is getting by the Academy even though I doubt the Academy will select it as a winner.

Juno sounds like your average comedy fare if you just go by the plot summary. Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) is your weird but strangely charming loudmouthed teenager who gets pregnant with the shy track-team Tic-Tac addicted Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). Rather than getting an abortion, she decides to have the baby and give it up for adoption to Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) and Mark Loring (Jason Bateman).

Director Jason Reitman (probably known best for Thank You For Smoking) teams up with writer Diablo Cody to create a pretty wacky comedy that manages to keep itself apart from other wacky comedy romances that have become commonplace.

First off, the casting is top-notch and Ellen Page finally gets a movie that showcases the sheer talent she is able to demonstrate onscreen. Her former hit Hard Candy is vastly different from her light-hearted teenage persona in Juno, showing her tremendous versatility and potential in a still very young career. Garner and Bateman, both bring their mediocre TV talent to the table, and while Bateman seems a bit more natural, Garner’s forever look of distress that has been plastered on her face since Alias is starting to look overused.

Story-wise Juno has a lot to offer underneath the seemingly boring premise. All the characters are really lively and intriguing, and though Reitman’s world is a bit too sugar-coated and nothing truly bad ever happens in the sitcom-like fantasy land, the dialog and life lessons are worthwhile. In a year filled with painfully serious movies like No Country for Old Men to Michael Clayton, it is nice to see a comedy with substance, fun and a lot of great quotes. Perhaps that explains why Juno performed the best of the Academy nominations by box office numbers; Americans seem to be flocking toward happier movies since Disney’s Enchanted, after having met an onslaught of disillusioned post-modernist drivel for the past decade.

Juno is the weird, wacky teenager that has a hamburger phone, a pipe that she pretends to puff, and is a repository for musical pop culture and horror films. Then there is her equally wacky stepmother, Bren MacGuff (Allison Janney), whom she has given her part of the loudmouth charm she possesses and her loving father, Mac MacGuff (J K Simmons) who provides her with sound but oddball advice. Juno’s family manages to stray outside the overused dysfunctional depressing family unit and is actually something that is supporting and nurturing despite some odd quirks here and there.

That’s ultimately why I think Juno rocks. After many years of formulaic romantic comedies, Juno’s got something different and refreshingly unique packed into an indie-film-like package that still manages to gain mass appeal.