Reviews2.Main Content
Juno
Characters don't come sweeter: Juno
Mon, 23 Jun 2008
First time screenwriter, Diablo Cody, scoops both BAFTA and Oscar for her script for smash hit Juno – and our reviewer Owain Gillard, thinks it’s quite right too.
Juno (Ellen Page) ambles around her neighbourhood with the largest bottle of Sunny-D you’ve ever seen. At the local shop, she buys a pregnancy kit for the third time in as many weeks. After taking the test in the shop lav, the truth is plain to see: she is still pregnant. As the shop guy says, "That's one doodle that can't be undid, home-skillet," and that pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the movie.
When Juno comes clean to her father Mac (J.K. Simmons) and stepmother Bren (Allison Janney), Mac concedes that he didn’t think Paulie Bleeker had it in him. And he does have a point for Bleeker (Michael Cera) is as much the gormless high school dweeb as Juno is the bright-as-a-button sixteen-year-old girl with a penchant for alternative rock and a killer line for every occasion.
Juno’s best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) shows her support by helping her find suitable adoptive parents. Escorted by Mac, Juno visits the chosen pair in their luxury home and hits it off with them straight away. Mark (Jason Bateman), a composer for commercials, shares Juno’s love for music while Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) shares her desire to give the baby-to-be the best possible start in life. As Juno’s bump grows bigger, relationships grow more complex and just about the only constant in the whole equation is the unbreakable bond between Juno and Mac.
Stripper and blogger-turned-screenwriter Diablo Cody, who’s not even thirty yet, commendably dodges the style-over-content pitfall, sticking to a tight, linear narrative that leaves most of the clever stuff to her wisecracking little heroine. No surprise that she scooped both Bafta and Oscar for her screenplay. Likewise, director Jason Reitman who, like Juno herself, gets his comedy genes from his father’s side, pitches the direction surprisingly dead pan. As you’d expect from this team though (which has John Malkovich as a producer), there’s no shortage of extraneous and peculiar little touches to consign Juno firmly to the file labelled ‘Quirky’, perhaps next to Little Miss Sunshine or The Royal Tenembaums.
One thing that sets the film apart from almost all movies in the teen comedy genre is that it achieves more than merely making the audience laugh. Yes, there are chuckles all along - thanks to excellent turns from Page and Cera especially - but Cody’s script delves deeper than that, and finds a complexity in the character interactions that occasionally makes the film as sad as it is funny. And better still, it doesn’t dwell on it.
It’s probably safe to say that, as a direct result of this 12A rated film, phrases like “honest to Blog”, “pork sword” and “Kick it old skool” are resonating around high school corridors all over the Western world as we speak. Let’s just hope that "I am for shizz up the spout" is one of the lesser-used ones. But enough of this moralizing…
…and a word on the soundtrack: it’s perfect. Though some way off the beaten track [led by the Moldy Peaches’glorious Anyone Else But You], it’s destined for broad appeal, thus adding another string to the bow of this curiously powerful film.
This review has been written by Owain Gillard, a Script Factory Member whose ambition to write screenplays full-time is being bolstered by various assignments as a script reader/consultant and film reviewer. Having graduated from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1998 (Film & TV Dept) with a First Class Honours Degree, Owen currently works for the Wales Screen Commission.
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