JUNO (Not like the town in Alaska)

I loved this movie. It’s destined to be a cult classic. One of those that you own on DVD b/c you can’t get enough of the one-liners. That you and your brothers sit around the dinner table and relive scenes from over & over. You have to see it 3 times just to hear all the great lines.

The first 20 minutes of this movie was some of the most innovative and brilliant writing we’ve seen since, well before the strike. No really, since old Woody Allen, Bananas. It’s better than that. It’s right up there with HBO’s Award-Winning Series, Entourage (which by the way, I do not condone or encourage watching!)
The interchange between the storeclerk (Rainn Wilson, or as we know him, Dwight) and Juno is solidly the funniest 5 minutes of film in years, and then the writers take us straight into the minds of the modern American teen girl. The fast-paced phone conversation is hilarious and barely comprehendable, which as I consider myself something of an expert on teenage girls, the writer nails dead-on! 30 minutes into the movie, you know you’ll be back to see this again.

My other real delight with the film was its capture of the modern American High School. Gone are the days of strong stereotypes. Sure there are Prom Queens, Football Hereos and Goth Kids, but in the today’s culture, they mesh & meld. Vegan Punkers rock out shows where the audience is filled with razor-cut hair Emo girls and girls in pink & pearls. Cheerleaders dress like they bought their clothes at a garage sale when not in uniform. Kids are classified more often by their musical interests than their clothes or interests. In fact, most of the time, on a Friday night at the mall, you can’t tell which “group” of my day these kids would belong to. Now, don’t get me wrong, the personalities are the same. Mean kids, nice kids, smart kids, athletic kids, there all there, but they don’t look like they used to. This movie, unlike all the loser-becomes-popular teen flics, gets it. Juno looked into the modern suburban high school and captured the image in real-time.

So, before you think I’m sending in my vote for an Academy Award, let me tell you that as much as you think I loved it from my previous comments, I don’t think any teenage girl in America should be allowed to see this movie! I know, too late. But here’s the bottom line, we have enough pop-culture that makes heroes out of sinners. At the end of this film, Juno has become Joan Of Arc. She’s such the martyr. Sure there’s that line about the burning heartburn, and the parents wish she was into hard drugs over this, but it’s all so soft. Finding the couple in the Penny Saver, how convenient. Did you know it can take up to10 years for a couple in America to adopt an American newborn? Nothing about Juno’s ordeal ever got too difficult for this sardonic, but still cute, 16 year old. I’m pregnant, but I’m still mad you didn’t ask me to Prom. That’s just not real life. The teen fathers don’t pine over their pregnant sweethearts. They don’t typically even stick around, and often the families on both sides don’t want them to. Pregnant girls are scorned, often quitting from the sheer weight of judgement passed on them. We barely see a glimpse of that in this movie. And for goodness sake, get real about labor. 20 seconds of screams to get to a funny line doesn’t get through to our teen audience that having a baby is PAINFUL & DIFFICULT and you feel like your body is going to split in two. I didn’t get that from the slow motion moment in Juno where her cute best friend and her sarcastic but supportive mom help her push the baby out. Perfect endings just aren’t that common for teen pregnancies. Hollywood gave us a new martyr to admire in Juno. I mean, thank God they chose for her to be against the abortion, that the baby had fingernails. But what we got instead was a hero for young girls to look up to: “I’m tough, but sensitive, I can handle it and make good decisions and find my own adoptive couple, and oh yeah, I have to pee all the time and it sucks, but in the end my boyfriend is boss and I play the guitar and write cool songs! “ What teenage girl won’t admire that?