Reader Recommends: Juno (2007)

A little while ago I was asked if I'd seen Juno, and if I would see Juno. I've been putting it off because I honestly didn't want to see this movie. I've been putting it off and putting it off, but I finally decided to get it out of the way. So today I watched Juno. Just like most people, I had been hit by the exhaustion of seeing Michael Cera act in the exact same way in every movie, all the time. That changed with Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, but this film is from back when he was still just being that same boring, shy kid. I'm also not a big fan of Ellen Page, so those 2 things combined into me going into this one not looking forward to it. Find out if and how those thoughts influenced me during the movie after the jump.


The story is pretty simple on the surface. The film starts off with Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) finding out she's pregnant and she tells the father, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) about it. Paulie is understandably stunned, understandable since they're both only 16. After some tribulations, Juno decides to have the baby and give it up to good parents. Enter Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) and Mark Loring (Jason Bateman). On the surface they seem like the perfect couple and they live in a really huge house and are obviously very financially stable. While they are genuinely good people, not everything is always perfect. Also, what is to become of Juno and her beau Paulie?

Juno meets the Lorings, Vanessa and Mark

Something I had heard about Diablo Cody's writing (she wrote this film if you couldn't guess) is that she throws in a lot of gibberish made up slang words into her dialog. This was incredibly evident at the start of Juno when Juno calls her friend to tell her she's gotten herself pregnant. I've never heard a more forced and false sounding attempt at sounding fresh, young, and cool. Generally the script of Juno completely failed for me and I really started off hating this movie.

Thankfully Michael Cera isn't actually in the movie all that much. It makes sense, as he really doesn't have to do anything while Juno is pregnant, and he's pretty much out of the picture most of the time since she's going to be giving the baby away. Instead, much more time is spent with Juno's family and the Loring family. Which is where the film started to turn around for me.

The dialog and fake "cool" speech of Juno is just annoying and terrible

As the film progressed, the "Look at me! I'm so cool" hipster talk started to fade away. As the pregnancy becomes more of a reality for Juno, she is forced to mature and much of that terrible dialog goes away. As the movie starts focusing on the realities of being pregnant, it seems to shift gears. Also, since Juno has no one to hang out with since she pushes Paulie away, she starts hanging out at the Loring's place and spending time with the surprisingly cool Mark.

She and Mark share a lot of interests including music and horror movies. The time he spends with her makes him start to realize he's not happy in the stuffy "perfect" adult life, and isn't ready to be a father. It was actually this story, the drama between Vanessa and Mark, that I found far more interesting than anything else going on in the movie. Although I'll admit that I thought Ellen Page did a really good job and she really won me over.

J.K. Simmons stole every scene he was in

Of all the characters in the movie though, my favorite had to be Juno's parents, played by Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons. While he's been in a ton of things, Simmons is probably best known for his role as J. Jonah Jameson in the Spider-Man movies. I thought his flat delivery and subtle acting was really good and he was often funny without really trying. Every scene he was in, he stole, and it's a real shame he wasn't more present in the movie.

While Juno started off really bad for me, what with all the bad dialog and annoying music, it became more serious with the adoptive couple and added in a whole other layer of drama I never expected. By the end it became a sweet, charming movie about a young mother that I was quite enjoying. Unfortunately it ruined that by finishing the movie on a super sappy lame scene and more of that terrible music. I'll probably never watch this movie again, and the only things I take away from this is that Ellen Page is much better than I thought before, and further confirmation that J.K. Simmons is awesome. Ultimately I don't think I'd recommend this to anyone I know; it's more bad, annoying and pointless than it is sweet and good. Needed more J.K. Simmons.