Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
As a preface to this review, I have to tell a little story. About a month ago I was fortunate to sit down and interview the star of this magnificent, funny, touching splendor of a movie, Ellen Page, and the film's writer, Diablo Cody, who is not only guaranteed an Oscar nomination—she seems pretty certain to win it. We talked at length about Ellen's rising career and Diablo's path from famous blogger to autobiographer to screenwriter. We talked about her next screenplay, a female-centric horror film set to be produced by JUNO director Jason Reitman, and all sorts of fun details and insight about JUNO itself.
Sadly, you will never read that interview because while I and a couple hundred of my nearest and dearest friends sat in the new Alamo Drafthouse Ritz Theatre last weekend for Butt Numb-a-Thon 9, someone broke into the car holding my luggage and swiped not only my laptop but also the tape of the interview. I'd brought both to Austin, hoping to catch up on a little work during my downtime in the days leading up to BNAT, and I'd even started transcribing this interview. As you may have read back in August, this hasn't been my greatest year as far as property loss goes; this incident was the capper. But interview or not (and trust me, there are dozens of fine interviews floating around with Cody and Page), JUNO is simply one of the most charming and relevant films of the year, and it arises from one the finest screenplays in a very long time.
JUNO is one of those movies you like almost instantly, and if you don't, you will after about 10 minutes. There's a rhythm and a cadence to the dialog and the flow of the plot that somehow manages to feel both organic and unlike anything in the natural world. Diablo Cody's screenplay is loaded with what a lot of people are calling "hipster" speak, but the fact is most changes or additions to pop culture and the English language are borne out of teen culture. There are times during the film where I felt Cody was making slight but necessary (to tell her story) adjustments to the English language. This story of a high school girl named Juno (Ellen Page of HARD CANDY and X-MEN 3) who gets pregnant and decides to give her baby away for adoption has the makings of a heartwarming cautionary tale, and that's certainly part of the proceedings. But JUNO is more concerned with creating rich, likeable characters who add layer upon layer of fascinating depth to this film.
There are no villains here (fellow students glaring at the pregnant Juno are about as bad as things get), which doesn't mean that our heroine escapes a few stern but loving lectures about responsibility from her father (the unflappable J.K. Simmons) and stepmother (Allison Janney, in a role that should make every screenwriter rethink the evil stepmom cliché). After she gets pregnant after a one-night-stand with her best friend Paulie Bleeker (SUPERBAD’s Michael Cera), Juno first considers abortion. In what might be the funniest scene ever set in an abortion clinic, that idea goes out the window in favor of adoption. After skimming the Penny Saver ads, Juno and her friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) locate a nice suburban couple (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner) who cannot have children. Their first meeting is painfully awkward, and Cody makes it clear which of the two would-be parents we're supposed to like more. But what might surprise you is the sophistication the story has as our loyalties to certain characters shift along with Juno, who becomes unlikely friends with Bateman's character, Mark, a commercial jingle writer who wants to be a rock star and watch horror movies all day. Garner's uptight Vanessa clearly wants this child more than Mark, but we feel strongly they'll both make great parents.
If ever there was the perfect blending of actor and screenplay, Page breathes life into her character in a way that will instantly make you feel she's playing herself, including the way she deals with the quirky Paulie, who is clearly in love with her but lacks the personality to deal with her mood swings or his own feelings. Always having Paulie dressed in baggy yellow track shorts and a headband makes him seem like a nerd, but the truth is that he's just a slightly nervous and extremely sweet kid. Juno's cynicism and wiser-than-her-years attitude and delivery may put some people off, but I have a hard time understanding that. She's aware that she's different, and it sometimes troubles her. When she's first telling her parents about her pregnancy, she admits she doesn't know what kind of kid she is yet. It's a rare moment when her guard is down and she's not searching for the next clever thing to say, and it's the first of what turns into many warm and touching moments in JUNO.
Director Jason Reitman (THANK YOU FOR SMOKING) adds some nice visual touches to JUNO, borrowing ever so slightly from the straightforward camera angles of Wes Anderson. But what he wisely does is not to let the filmmaking interfere with this perfect script. He concentrates on the performances, which are all absolutely flawless. When I look back at all of the films I saw in 2007, I can't think of a better collection of actors synching up so effortlessly with the screenplay. Nearly every actor is required to be both funny and emotionally vulnerable in some truly tough scenes, especially a few near the end, and everybody nails it. The person who truly shocked me was Jennifer Garner, whose character seems, at first, to be the most one-dimensional. She keeps an immaculate home, always dresses pretty, has perfect skin, puts down her husband's need to rock and is driven to over-prepare for this child. We're never meant to hate her, but we understand she's the square to Bateman's cool-guy, who watches gory Herschell Gordon Lewis horror films and listens to Sonic Youth. All I'll say is don't get too attached to your preconceptions about anyone in this film.
JUNO is such a good film that it makes you mad at other films for not trying as hard to be this spectacular. And it's one of those rare films that can't be oversold or over hyped. I'd been hearing about JUNO for quite a while before I finally saw it, and I'd convinced myself it couldn't be as good as everyone said. It's better. And if you're one of those people who resists seeing a movie because everybody says it's soooo good, then a) you're an idiot, and b) in this case, this rumors are true. You'll walk out of JUNO feeling better about yourself for having seen it and better about the world for allowing a film like this to get made.
Capone
