I really wanted to love Juno. I wanted to be blown away and left startled and laughing in my seat. Not only are the reviews for Juno raving and wooshing across my television screen, but also my closest friends urged and begged me to see the movie. “It’s so you!” they claimed, spouting that I would adore the music and the movie was heartwarming and eye opening. So, I listened. Maybe it’s me, or maybe it’s the slow time of year, but I have to say, I was not impressed. The acting was weak, the plot lines were un-original, and the dialogue was hard to understand and weirdly paced. Juno may have been exciting to moviegoers because it’s a new “indie” movie with stimulating music, but thrilling and innovative it was not. Good reviews aside, I really, truly did have high hopes for Juno; it’s directed by Jason Reitman, son of famed director Ivan Reitman and full of some of my favorite comedic actors (who doesn’t love Allison Janey?). But, sometimes all we can do is hope, right?

Juno is about a high school student who becomes pregnant and decides to give the baby up for adoption. However, instead of anonymously giving the baby up for adoption, she chooses a couple to form a relationship with and hand her child over to. The monotone-voiced Ellen Page, an adorable new-ish actress in her first comedic movie role, plays Juno. Her sweet boyfriend, Paulie Bleeker (and in my humble opinion, the best part of the movie) was played by Michael Cera, who made his name famous from the highly loved television show, Arrested Development. The adoptive parents, played by Jennifer Garner and other Arrested Development alum, Jason Bateman, were also a high point to the movie, but not for their acting skills as much as for their adorable faces. The beginning of the movie was full of fast quips and dialogue written in a completely un-colloquial manner, which made me feel like I was watching an episode of Dawson’s Creek rather than a romantic comedy. While this fast paced repartee slowed down into more of a regular movie dialogue, it set a weird tone for the movie’s conversational pacing which ended up irking me due to its unrealistic linguistic patterns (as my sister points out, much like these last two sentences). It was chock full of SAT words strung together in awkward sentences which made the meaning behind them hard to figure out at such a rapid pace.
I’ve found after telling my true feelings about this movie, “it was okay, much like a Lifetime movie” people hissed at me telling me I missed the point, and didn’t I think it was beautiful? Beautiful was not a word I’d use to describe this movie; perhaps I would use sweet, or colorful, or different. To put it plainly, I wasn’t happy with much of the movie. As my little cousin says, “I am sad at you” and that’s how I felt at certain turning points of Juno. I was sad at their portrayal of the abortion clinic; I was sad at the weird comedic timing and weird timing of the movie in general; I was sad at the lack in the depth of the characters’ relationships. There was one scene that brought an iota of tears to my eyes. It’s a scene after Juno gives birth and she’s in the hospital bed where Paulie Bleeker comes in and holds her in bed. I am sure anyone who has been in the hospital will tear up at this scene, for it really is the most poignant scene in the movie because it depicts the warmth within the cold walls of the reality of the hospital, and thus, life. My friends who said I would love the music were right: it was pretty good. I wouldn’t buy the album unless it was on sale, but it definitely kept the movie alive.
It’s hard to write a movie review for a much loved movie, when you well, didn’t love it, but I can tell you, there was no difference, for me at least, between Juno and any good (and I mean good) Lifetime movie. Should you pay money to see it? Maybe on a rainy day when you’ve run through all your classic rainy day DVDs. Should you hire a babysitter to see it? Absolutely not. Should you wait to rent it? I wish I had.
Article written by Olivia March, © 2008 butyoudontlooksick.com