You don’t have to be pregnant, and you don’t have to be a teen. You don’t even have to be a girl to enjoy the film "Juno."
"Juno" stars Ellen Page as a sixteen-year-old girl who gets pregnant and decides to give the baby up for adoption. The father is her teenaged friend, Paulie Bleeker, played by Michael Cera.
Roger Ebert’s review of the film says that Juno decides she wants to experience sex and enlists the unwilling Bleeker ( interview online and available January 15, 2008 http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071213/REVIEWS/712130303) but I didn’t get a sense of Paulie Bleeker being unwilling so much as being clueless. "Whose idea was it?" he stammers, as Juno breaks the news that she’s pregnant, and they review the "how did it happen."
Perhaps he is like most teenage boys who find themselves in a sexual encounter–possibly the tiniest bit unwilling, but otherwise hormonally ready and able. But Bleeker isn’t the stereotypical teenaged sperm donor.
He’s rather geeky looking. He’s cute, but not drop-dead gorgeous. He’s not a hunky football player captain of the team type. He’s smart (though evidently never heard of condoms) and also musically talented. He might even be a bit of a mama’s boy–his mother lets him know in no uncertain terms that she does not like Juno, who in one comically understated moment, races her pregnant self against the heaving bulk of Paulie’s mother up the stairs to Paulie’s room.
But neither does Ellen Page seem like the stereotypical movie teen queen who gets pregnant. I recall a Molly Ringwald film from the 1980s called "For Keeps," where she veers from her usual "Breakfast Club" type role and portrays a pregnant teen. While that offering may be otherwise forgettable, for its time it was considered a realistic portrayal of teen pregnancy and putting life on hold.
Ellen Page’s portrayal seems offbeat at times–but in a good way. She’s not a teen beauty queen, her family are neither jet-setting suburbanites with high-powered jobs nor are they poverty-stricken ghetto dwellers. She’s not into drugs. She’s not into sports. Juno and her family are very normal, middle-class people. Dad is a heating & cooling guy, mom left the family years ago and remarried and had another set of "starter kids," as Juno tells us in an opening scene voice over. Step-mom is a nail technician. Little half-sister is a charming girl named Liberty Bell.
The parents are understandably dismayed by Juno's news, but are supportive of the pregnancy and her decision to give the baby up for adoption. During a visit to the ultra-sound technician, Juno's step-mother defends her when the technician makes a remark along the lines of "thank God you aren't keeping the baby." She acidly asks the technician if she feels she could do a better job raising the child than her own "dumb-ass daughter," but it's said in such a way that "dumb-ass" or not, Juno is not going to be insulted in step-mama's presence.
Justin Bateman and Jennifer Garner are the couple Juno chooses to be the blissfully wedded parents of her baby. Juno and her dad meet the couple at their ritzy upscale home, and the deal is made. Garner comes across as the less likeable of the two would-be parents–she is so baby-crazy that the audience can almost taste it, but on the other hand, anyone who has ever experienced what her character has would be sure to sympathize. There isn’t any long-drawn out scene about the horrors of infertility treatments, because the film, after all, is not about Bateman and Garner, but about the girl who plans to, as Juno puts it, give them the "gift of life." That Bateman’s character relates so well to Juno and he seems so much the ultra cool one should be a tip-off, but I won’t give away anything more, there.
The high school scenes are interesting. Juno does not experience a lot of overt criticism from schoolmates nor family for the unplanned pregnancy. One parting comment she makes to the adoptive couple, as Garner remarks that Juno’s parents must be wondering where she is, is "I’m already pregnant, so what other shenanigans can I get up to?" Rather than being ostracized by her peers, they instead seem to continue as if nothing had changed–iJuno comments to Garner in that everyone at school is always grabbing her stomach to feel the baby move.
But, Juno remarks to Bleeker in a later scene that everyone stares at her stomach rather than at her face, and during an earlier scene, points out to him with evident pain, resentment, and anger in her voice that at least he doesn’t have to carry "the evidence" of their sexual encounter underneath his sweater.
While watching the film, I was wondering what time frame it was set in. How refreshing to have a movie without cell phones–and not just in the audience, but on the screen. Every modern-day flick I see anymore has every character flipping open a cell phone to make inane chatter with somebody else. But there were no cell phones in evidence in this film.
In fact, the characters, and especially the high school track team, sport white tube socks with colorfully striped tops. Now the last time I remember wearing tube socks it was probably 1978, when they were a hot item for every preteen child to wear. There were no clues in the setting, really, aside from the family van, that this film was set in the 2000s. One character makes a reference to 1993, another to Kurt Cobain, and as far as clothing goes, it’s generic enough (with the exception of one student wearing one of those paper-thin t-shirts plastered down over her hips and a shrug sweater) that the film ought to be able to retain a timeless element that will, I hope, make it a favorite years from now.
The dialogue contains some teen slang–the response in this locale being "wizard!" instead of "awesome," for example, and "junk" to refer to certain parts of human anatomy. But otherwise the dialogue is witty, concise, expressive, and delivered very naturally. Juno has mouthfuls of dialogue that would sound stilted coming from anyone else–it’s definitely not a sitcom-style script, chock full of one-liners and catch phrases. But Ellen Page spouts this vocabulary in such a natural way that the viewer suspects that Juno grew up in a household where the spoken word was much revered. In fact, I think we’re supposed to believe that, as she has to explain her name to Jason Bateman. The name isn’t "Juneau," as in Alaska, she says. Her dad was "heavy into Roman gods" and such and he named her after Zeus’s wife, Juno, who was beautiful and also wicked, "kind of like Diana Ross."
Teens will find much to like in this film, though they probably won’t get any tips on how to have sex in a recliner chair, or how to avoid parental or sibling intrusions. Adults will watch some parts knowingly, perhaps recalling how things were "back in my day." Both will be able to sympathize with Juno, who is certainly mature enough to know she’s not equipped to be a mother just yet, but still immature in other ways. The immaturity battles with the maturity, and one particularly poignant moment comes when Bleeker visits her after the birth of the baby. He cradles her in the bed, and she cries–there is nothing false about the moment.
The sound track is definitely worth listening to, and features snippets from Sonic Youth, Belle & Sebastian, Buddy Holly, and The Velvet Underground, among others. One nice thing about the film "Juno" is that it isn’t an excuse for a music video. The music enhances the action, rather than the other way around.
Even if you think "Juno" is strictly a "chick flick," it’s still worth your time. Enjoyable, humorous, truthful, and with a cast you’d like to see continue as long as they can keep the chemistry from this film going.
