Juno film review
Feb. 16th, 2008 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat[Ugh this entry was filled with typos - am going to attempt to edit it because it is bugging me, even though I realize it is close to impossible to successfully proofread stuff solely on a computer screen, you have to print it off.]
Lovely day, if a bit on the chilly side. Wouldn't say it was exactly bitter or really cold - not like last week. But then I hail from the midwest - where temperatures often sank to below 0 with windchills in the double digits. Course - in the midwest we could happily stay inside with limited exposure - driving to and from everywhere on the planet. One does not walk to places in surburbia - not because one does not want to, but because it is often physically impossible to do so without getting hit by a car. Ironic that. You'd think it would be easier to walk around in surburbia than an urban environment - after all there is more grass. But it's not. I remember trying to walk to the movie theater once when I lived in Johnson County, Kansas (one of the biggest surburbs in the US), the movie theater was within viewing distance of my apartment complex. I could literally see it. But I could not walk to it without being hit by a car. Why? I'd have to cross four, four lane streets, all with racing non-stop traffic, no sidewalks, or walkways but the street and the narrow curb and busy parking lots. Sure if I could walk it - it would take ten minutes tops, but I couldn't. I had to drive and deal with parking - which with traffic usually took thirty minutes. Here? I can walk to the theater in less than twenty minutes, no problems. In fact it is easier to walk than drive to it.
Saw the flick Juno today. It's okay, I guess, wasn't impressed by it. Not as good as Waitress, which also dealt with an unwanted pregnancy but felt more innovative and oddly more realistic and authentic. Oddly, because of the two, Waitress is filmed in a surrealistic manner and is not trying for realism, while Juno is clearly trying to be realistic and failed miserably in my opinion. May not be fair to compare the two - since they are very different films. I don't really care about the Oscars and other award nonsense, learned a long time ago that the Oscars and other "awards shows" aren't about quality or talent so much as industry politics. (If Ghandi's win didn't teach me that, Titantic did. I stopped taking them seriously after Titantic.)
At any rate, Juno's a sweet if somewhat trite little story about a pregnant teen who finds a pair of parents to adopt her kid, things don't quite go as well as planned but still turn out nice and rosy in the end, with quirky music filtered throughout. The first half was entertaining, the middle drug so badly that the lady next to me decided to start text messaging her friends during the film and did not stop until the guy behind her, aided by me, politely asked her to stop. She sulked for about twenty minutes, then packed up her things and stormed out of the theater, never to return.
Pause for a public service announcement: IF YOU CARRY A CELL PHONE TURN IT OFF WHEN YOU SIT IN A MOVIE THEATER or ANY TYPE OF THEATER THAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE IN WITH YOU. AND BY OFF I MEAN COMPLETELY - NOT ON VIBRATE, NOT ON BUZZER. IF YOU CAN'T BEAR TO DO THAT, EITHER DO NOT BRING IT OR DON'T COME.
Even without the mad text messeger, I can't help but think that this would have been a better film to watch on tv than on a movie screen. It really doesn't require a big screen - it's a small film, without much cinematography to speak of, mostly dependent on close-ups and quirky dialogue, both of which work far better on a smaller screen and within the comforts of one's own living room.
The story itself? I found predictable and not all that interesting. I guess I've seen too many films like this? Ellen Page is good in the role but hardly remarkable. She is, I admit, the reason the film works. And she has great comic timing. I also liked Michael Cera, Allison Janney and JK Simmons. Jason Batemen and Jennifer Garner....were well Jason Batemen and Jennifer Garner. While I tend to like Batemen more or less, Garner's acting makes me wince. It's so telegraphed. They are however perfectly cast as the too good to be true yuppie couple that Juno selects to raise her child.
Apparently this film is politically controversial in much the same way Million Dollar Baby was, except I think Million Dollar Baby was a better and far more ambiguous film, with more interesting characters. I didn't really find the abortion issue that central to this story. But then, I look at the issue differently than most people do. I have never understood why people think everyone experiences or needs the same things they do. What is right for you may not be right for someone else. Not all women can have children safely. Not all women have good pregnancies. Juno had a great pregnancy, no pain, no problems, no morning sickness. But a lot of women do not have that experience, several have complications. Also Juno's labor didn't appear to be that painful. My sisterinlaw had a horrendous pregnancy that left her with a severly damaged back which she still struggles with. And I've known women who have had abortions - in all the cases it was a difficult decision but it was theirs to make. I honestly do not know what I would have done if I were in their shoes. I do not believe I have the right to judge them and I certainly do not have the right to tell them not to do it. As for the whole - we must protect the baby deal - is it protection if you bring a child into the world who is in pain, not wanted, or causes pain. Life at all costs? I'm not sure I buy that argument. Also should someone be forced to carry a life that is feeding off of them, making them ill, against their will? Sure they had to know this was a possible consequence when they had sex. But...should a woman be punished, worse a child? Also does life really begin at conception? I'm not sure I buy that argument regardless of the scientific proof behind it. At any rate - I'm not of the opinion that this is a "one size fits all issue" and to treat it as such is well impractical and a bit ignorant. (At a loss for the correct word). So the Juno story did not strike me as a political one any more than Million Dollar Baby did - it was a story about one person and how they dealt with a certain situation. Not how the rest of us should or for that matter necessarily would deal with it.
I disagree with the critics who stated that Juno is unique or different from most women portrayed on film. If she had been a virgin, not having sex, and having abstained? Sure, I'd agree with that assessment. But most of the women I've seen on tv and film lately sleep with guys and are often the instigators of it. The last time I've seen a female virgin on film was in the 1980s with Molly Ringwald, although I think Cher on Clueless may have been a virgin, can't remember. Hannah Montana may still be one, not positive about that one. Not that I have anything against having sex, just that I hardly see it as unique. We live in a society in which it appears to be the assumption that everyone has an active sex life and if you aren't there's something wrong with you. Ghod forbid you haven't had sex at all. We make fun of people in tv shows and films that have not had sexual intercourse -so having a sexually active sixteen year old is not ground-breaking. It might have been ten to fifteen years ago, but is not now. Juno, like other films of this ilk, is disturbing in that it pushes that view for the teen set - establishing the view that all teens are sexually active and if you aren't there may well be something wrong with you. Sure it shows us the consequences, but they are hardly dire, she seems to win out in the end. This pov is hardly new, just rent any number of teen romantic comedies or films. American Pie and Can't Hardly Wait, come to mind. Again, I'm not saying there's necessarily anything wrong with this perspective, just that it is hardly new or politically controversial - heck turn on Gossip Girl or The OC, or any daytime soap opera, or for that matter watch Buffy.
Is Juno a female Holden Caulfield? Maybe. But not in the way the actress thinks. The film much like Waitress - tried to go the feminist route by doing the whole bit about the child being raised by a single mom. The biggest conflict in the story comes when Jason Bateman's character decides he's more interested in Juno than his wife, Vanessa (which isn't hard, his wife has 0 personality) and announces to Juno that he's leaving Vanessa, stopping just short of telling her why - when he comes to the realization she is not into him and is completely unaware of his attraction. The moment this happened, I rolled my eyes and thought, ghod, how cliche and predictable. So, instead of dumping the whole idea of these two as parents (which any sane person would do), Juno decides to still give her child to the bland and somewhat irritating Vanessa, played by Garner. (I remember thinking during the film - why in the hell did Batement marry this woman, she's boring as all get out and why does Juno give her the child? Desperation? Most likely. And another somewhat cliche sequence where Garner plays with a little girl at the mall - that Juno and her best friend witness.) Afterwards, Juno goes back to being a teen with her boyfriend, playing guitar, riding her bike, everything nice and normal.
I was bored during most of this film, if it weren't for the quirky and clever dialogue - interspersed throughout, not to mention the soundtrack, I may have gotten irritated with it. Diablo does have a knack for dialogue. Although, I'm not sure kids really sound like this - or the one's I've heard on the streets of NYC don't - but that may not be a fair comparison. Also whomever is in charge of props, costume design, set design, and credits -should be applauded. Great props. I want that hamburger phone. And I adored the t-shirts Juno wears.
The speech her father gives her did touch me, but it was also somewhat cliche.."the best person to be with is someone who loves you no matter what you look like, what you do, and how you are - they'll like you when you are ugly, pretty, nasty, great, whatever..they'll think the sun shines out your ass." I've heard it before. Spike gave a similar speech to Buffy in Touched actually. One of the problems with Juno is it has a tendency to state the obvious at times or underline things that we already know. To an extent some of its humor comes from that.
Juno does admittedly have its moments. The opening sequence where she's drinking Sunny-D to take a pregnancy test at a local pharmacy or the bit when she describes what the guys look like when they are running in their orange shorts with their things flopping about. But the pov is sloppy. We are supposed to be entirely in Junos, and the movie is at its best when we are - but it unfortunately shifts to Bleeker's and Vanessa/Batemen's at times. In the beginning of the film - we have a voice-over that is Juno's but that voice-over disappears halfway through it never to return. So we shift from first close to third distant to first distant.
The pacing was sluggish. Starts at nice clip, then slows down, making us feel the weight of each season of Juno's pregnancy. The problem is we don't really see how she is handling it. The entire story is focused on her interaction with Batement and to a smaller degree Bleeker. We don't get much of the school, her best-friend, or even her parents (just snippets) and very little of her little sis. As a result, I had troubles caring much about anyone. Also we get almost nothing of Vanessa - I have no idea why Vanessa wants to be a mom, this is alluded to but not explained. We see Vanessa almost completely through Batemen and Juno's eyes, neither is all that flattering.
In fact the three pov's of this allegedly feminist picture are Juno, Bleeker and Bateman. (One teenage girl, a teenage boy, and a man.) Bleeker is the most realistic of the three - an insecure, somewhat confused high school jock who loves this girl but has no idea what to do about her or the situation. Batman is also a kid who seems in over his head, albeit a thirty-something one. So we get male insecurity and a clever/pretty teenage girl both fantasize about and admire? This feels like another male fantasy piece. A trend I've been noting in chick flick/romantic comedies lately - the guy's pov is the focus and it's his fantasy we get. The previews to the film - also hit on this trend - one with Patrick Dempsey as a Maid of Honor - basically think My Best Friend's Wedding except Dempsey in the Julia Robert's role and he will probably get the girl (who in this one is engaged to the much more attractive Kevin McKid of Journeyman), and Definitely, Maybe - about a single father telling his daughter about her mother - one of five women he loved. Ugh. What happened to the female pov in these films? I'm so glad I'm not an actress in Hollywood right now.
While Juno is not a bad film, I don't recommend spending more than five bucks on it, if that. I wasted 11.50. I also think it makes a better rental. Wish I'd waited.
Overall rating: B-
Lovely day, if a bit on the chilly side. Wouldn't say it was exactly bitter or really cold - not like last week. But then I hail from the midwest - where temperatures often sank to below 0 with windchills in the double digits. Course - in the midwest we could happily stay inside with limited exposure - driving to and from everywhere on the planet. One does not walk to places in surburbia - not because one does not want to, but because it is often physically impossible to do so without getting hit by a car. Ironic that. You'd think it would be easier to walk around in surburbia than an urban environment - after all there is more grass. But it's not. I remember trying to walk to the movie theater once when I lived in Johnson County, Kansas (one of the biggest surburbs in the US), the movie theater was within viewing distance of my apartment complex. I could literally see it. But I could not walk to it without being hit by a car. Why? I'd have to cross four, four lane streets, all with racing non-stop traffic, no sidewalks, or walkways but the street and the narrow curb and busy parking lots. Sure if I could walk it - it would take ten minutes tops, but I couldn't. I had to drive and deal with parking - which with traffic usually took thirty minutes. Here? I can walk to the theater in less than twenty minutes, no problems. In fact it is easier to walk than drive to it.
Saw the flick Juno today. It's okay, I guess, wasn't impressed by it. Not as good as Waitress, which also dealt with an unwanted pregnancy but felt more innovative and oddly more realistic and authentic. Oddly, because of the two, Waitress is filmed in a surrealistic manner and is not trying for realism, while Juno is clearly trying to be realistic and failed miserably in my opinion. May not be fair to compare the two - since they are very different films. I don't really care about the Oscars and other award nonsense, learned a long time ago that the Oscars and other "awards shows" aren't about quality or talent so much as industry politics. (If Ghandi's win didn't teach me that, Titantic did. I stopped taking them seriously after Titantic.)
At any rate, Juno's a sweet if somewhat trite little story about a pregnant teen who finds a pair of parents to adopt her kid, things don't quite go as well as planned but still turn out nice and rosy in the end, with quirky music filtered throughout. The first half was entertaining, the middle drug so badly that the lady next to me decided to start text messaging her friends during the film and did not stop until the guy behind her, aided by me, politely asked her to stop. She sulked for about twenty minutes, then packed up her things and stormed out of the theater, never to return.
Pause for a public service announcement: IF YOU CARRY A CELL PHONE TURN IT OFF WHEN YOU SIT IN A MOVIE THEATER or ANY TYPE OF THEATER THAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE IN WITH YOU. AND BY OFF I MEAN COMPLETELY - NOT ON VIBRATE, NOT ON BUZZER. IF YOU CAN'T BEAR TO DO THAT, EITHER DO NOT BRING IT OR DON'T COME.
Even without the mad text messeger, I can't help but think that this would have been a better film to watch on tv than on a movie screen. It really doesn't require a big screen - it's a small film, without much cinematography to speak of, mostly dependent on close-ups and quirky dialogue, both of which work far better on a smaller screen and within the comforts of one's own living room.
The story itself? I found predictable and not all that interesting. I guess I've seen too many films like this? Ellen Page is good in the role but hardly remarkable. She is, I admit, the reason the film works. And she has great comic timing. I also liked Michael Cera, Allison Janney and JK Simmons. Jason Batemen and Jennifer Garner....were well Jason Batemen and Jennifer Garner. While I tend to like Batemen more or less, Garner's acting makes me wince. It's so telegraphed. They are however perfectly cast as the too good to be true yuppie couple that Juno selects to raise her child.
Apparently this film is politically controversial in much the same way Million Dollar Baby was, except I think Million Dollar Baby was a better and far more ambiguous film, with more interesting characters. I didn't really find the abortion issue that central to this story. But then, I look at the issue differently than most people do. I have never understood why people think everyone experiences or needs the same things they do. What is right for you may not be right for someone else. Not all women can have children safely. Not all women have good pregnancies. Juno had a great pregnancy, no pain, no problems, no morning sickness. But a lot of women do not have that experience, several have complications. Also Juno's labor didn't appear to be that painful. My sisterinlaw had a horrendous pregnancy that left her with a severly damaged back which she still struggles with. And I've known women who have had abortions - in all the cases it was a difficult decision but it was theirs to make. I honestly do not know what I would have done if I were in their shoes. I do not believe I have the right to judge them and I certainly do not have the right to tell them not to do it. As for the whole - we must protect the baby deal - is it protection if you bring a child into the world who is in pain, not wanted, or causes pain. Life at all costs? I'm not sure I buy that argument. Also should someone be forced to carry a life that is feeding off of them, making them ill, against their will? Sure they had to know this was a possible consequence when they had sex. But...should a woman be punished, worse a child? Also does life really begin at conception? I'm not sure I buy that argument regardless of the scientific proof behind it. At any rate - I'm not of the opinion that this is a "one size fits all issue" and to treat it as such is well impractical and a bit ignorant. (At a loss for the correct word). So the Juno story did not strike me as a political one any more than Million Dollar Baby did - it was a story about one person and how they dealt with a certain situation. Not how the rest of us should or for that matter necessarily would deal with it.
I disagree with the critics who stated that Juno is unique or different from most women portrayed on film. If she had been a virgin, not having sex, and having abstained? Sure, I'd agree with that assessment. But most of the women I've seen on tv and film lately sleep with guys and are often the instigators of it. The last time I've seen a female virgin on film was in the 1980s with Molly Ringwald, although I think Cher on Clueless may have been a virgin, can't remember. Hannah Montana may still be one, not positive about that one. Not that I have anything against having sex, just that I hardly see it as unique. We live in a society in which it appears to be the assumption that everyone has an active sex life and if you aren't there's something wrong with you. Ghod forbid you haven't had sex at all. We make fun of people in tv shows and films that have not had sexual intercourse -so having a sexually active sixteen year old is not ground-breaking. It might have been ten to fifteen years ago, but is not now. Juno, like other films of this ilk, is disturbing in that it pushes that view for the teen set - establishing the view that all teens are sexually active and if you aren't there may well be something wrong with you. Sure it shows us the consequences, but they are hardly dire, she seems to win out in the end. This pov is hardly new, just rent any number of teen romantic comedies or films. American Pie and Can't Hardly Wait, come to mind. Again, I'm not saying there's necessarily anything wrong with this perspective, just that it is hardly new or politically controversial - heck turn on Gossip Girl or The OC, or any daytime soap opera, or for that matter watch Buffy.
Is Juno a female Holden Caulfield? Maybe. But not in the way the actress thinks. The film much like Waitress - tried to go the feminist route by doing the whole bit about the child being raised by a single mom. The biggest conflict in the story comes when Jason Bateman's character decides he's more interested in Juno than his wife, Vanessa (which isn't hard, his wife has 0 personality) and announces to Juno that he's leaving Vanessa, stopping just short of telling her why - when he comes to the realization she is not into him and is completely unaware of his attraction. The moment this happened, I rolled my eyes and thought, ghod, how cliche and predictable. So, instead of dumping the whole idea of these two as parents (which any sane person would do), Juno decides to still give her child to the bland and somewhat irritating Vanessa, played by Garner. (I remember thinking during the film - why in the hell did Batement marry this woman, she's boring as all get out and why does Juno give her the child? Desperation? Most likely. And another somewhat cliche sequence where Garner plays with a little girl at the mall - that Juno and her best friend witness.) Afterwards, Juno goes back to being a teen with her boyfriend, playing guitar, riding her bike, everything nice and normal.
I was bored during most of this film, if it weren't for the quirky and clever dialogue - interspersed throughout, not to mention the soundtrack, I may have gotten irritated with it. Diablo does have a knack for dialogue. Although, I'm not sure kids really sound like this - or the one's I've heard on the streets of NYC don't - but that may not be a fair comparison. Also whomever is in charge of props, costume design, set design, and credits -should be applauded. Great props. I want that hamburger phone. And I adored the t-shirts Juno wears.
The speech her father gives her did touch me, but it was also somewhat cliche.."the best person to be with is someone who loves you no matter what you look like, what you do, and how you are - they'll like you when you are ugly, pretty, nasty, great, whatever..they'll think the sun shines out your ass." I've heard it before. Spike gave a similar speech to Buffy in Touched actually. One of the problems with Juno is it has a tendency to state the obvious at times or underline things that we already know. To an extent some of its humor comes from that.
Juno does admittedly have its moments. The opening sequence where she's drinking Sunny-D to take a pregnancy test at a local pharmacy or the bit when she describes what the guys look like when they are running in their orange shorts with their things flopping about. But the pov is sloppy. We are supposed to be entirely in Junos, and the movie is at its best when we are - but it unfortunately shifts to Bleeker's and Vanessa/Batemen's at times. In the beginning of the film - we have a voice-over that is Juno's but that voice-over disappears halfway through it never to return. So we shift from first close to third distant to first distant.
The pacing was sluggish. Starts at nice clip, then slows down, making us feel the weight of each season of Juno's pregnancy. The problem is we don't really see how she is handling it. The entire story is focused on her interaction with Batement and to a smaller degree Bleeker. We don't get much of the school, her best-friend, or even her parents (just snippets) and very little of her little sis. As a result, I had troubles caring much about anyone. Also we get almost nothing of Vanessa - I have no idea why Vanessa wants to be a mom, this is alluded to but not explained. We see Vanessa almost completely through Batemen and Juno's eyes, neither is all that flattering.
In fact the three pov's of this allegedly feminist picture are Juno, Bleeker and Bateman. (One teenage girl, a teenage boy, and a man.) Bleeker is the most realistic of the three - an insecure, somewhat confused high school jock who loves this girl but has no idea what to do about her or the situation. Batman is also a kid who seems in over his head, albeit a thirty-something one. So we get male insecurity and a clever/pretty teenage girl both fantasize about and admire? This feels like another male fantasy piece. A trend I've been noting in chick flick/romantic comedies lately - the guy's pov is the focus and it's his fantasy we get. The previews to the film - also hit on this trend - one with Patrick Dempsey as a Maid of Honor - basically think My Best Friend's Wedding except Dempsey in the Julia Robert's role and he will probably get the girl (who in this one is engaged to the much more attractive Kevin McKid of Journeyman), and Definitely, Maybe - about a single father telling his daughter about her mother - one of five women he loved. Ugh. What happened to the female pov in these films? I'm so glad I'm not an actress in Hollywood right now.
While Juno is not a bad film, I don't recommend spending more than five bucks on it, if that. I wasted 11.50. I also think it makes a better rental. Wish I'd waited.
Overall rating: B-
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-17 08:18 am (UTC)but now I think I'll just put it on my netflix queue (it will be out on DVD sooner or later)...
I think I may buy Waitress, I rewatched it (with all the extras) recently and it really holds up to a second viewing!
no subject
Date: 2008-02-17 07:43 pm (UTC)Waitress does hold up - I saw it last year and can remember it better than most of Juno, which I saw less than twenty-four hours ago.
No idea why Juno got the awards nods and Waitress didn't. The abortion issue? (shrugs)
Lots of people seem to love it, not sure why.
Maybe they identified with the characters more than I did?