Review: Juno

Juno poster With Oscar nominations and other top awards flying around, this might be an unpopular statement but: I didn’t like Juno.

I did like bits of the film - Michael Cera’s Bleeker and Allison Janney’s Bren were perfect; I liked the soundtrack because I’m somewhat a fan of that style of indie pop; I liked the costume and other set dressing/prop decisions; and I loved the title sequence - but Juno, meh. There was enough in the film for me to say I like Juno the film but not Juno, the character.

My main problem was how forced a lot of her dialogue seemed to be. This isn’t a dig at Ellen Page (I thought she was good) but at the dialogue itself: it was too clever, too perfect. Contrasting that to the rest of the reasonably naturalistic tone of the rest of the movie, it seemed fake. I could have really forgotten I was watching a fiction film if it hadn’t been so … over the top I guess. Since I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, I’ve argued with myself that perhaps Juno would be like that in real life (the conversation with her dad near the end suggests she might have inherited her tone and style from him) or perhaps the whole cocksure thing was a front to not show what was going on with her emotionally behind the scenes - but I didn’t really get that was the intention. It’s odd: I would have found it a better comedy if she’d said half the amount of funny things because I find naturally occurring humour (or humour that appears to be naturally occurring) far funnier than anything that sounds scripted.

Aside from the witty snarks though, I thought the character was pretty believable and was pleased to see that she considered all the choices available to her when she found out she was pregnant (especially given how rarely this happens in Hollywood films). I also like how Juno was the instigator of the sex in the first place because, again, not something you see in Hollywood anywhere near often enough (newsflash! teenage girls want to experiment sexual too!) and because it stopped her being seen as a victim. Sure, they should have been more careful but at least she accepted responsibility for her/their actions and dealt with it in a mature way.

On the whole, I would recommend watching the film but I’m not going to be cheering for it for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar later this month. It is very good but also overrated, if you know what I mean.