“Juno” is this year’s anointed indie darling, a clever film with a marvelous cast and a lively script that shrewdly balances jokes and sentiment.
Boy, did it annoy me. Blithely playing teen pregnancy for cutesy laffs, overplayed and overwritten, “Juno” will either worm its way into your heart or make you gag on indie-movie formula. It has the latter in abundance: edgy attitude, unexpected actors, a jangly song soundtrack left over from the last Wes Anderson movie.
The title character is a 16-year-old girl, played by Ellen Page, who finds herself pregnant by a nice boy (Michael Cera) from school. Juno is given to supercharged slang and spiky observations, such as her musing on the phrase “sexually active.” “What does that even mean”? she asks, as though the audience is supposed to share the absurdity of it. But if she really doesn’t know what “sexually active” means, it might explain the little “accident” that sets off the movie’s plot.
After trying to hang herself with red licorice (how hilarious!), Juno settles on the idea of advertising for a couple to adopt the child.
This wealthy couple is played by Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman, whose relationship is characterized by her control-freak nature and his Peter Pan-ism. Of course, both of them will be revealed to have other sides, which unfold in entirely predictable ways.
Let me back off from slamming this movie by pointing out that I did laugh at some of the lines by first-time screenwriter Diablo Cody. And Ellen Page’s spitfire performance confirms the talent she showed in “Hard Candy.” This elfin Canadian actress can do just about anything, and she doesn’t seem to care what the audience thinks — Juno’s rough edges stay rough.
As Juno’s parents, J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney are nice fantasy figures, and Garner and Bateman are skilled actors. Even with that, almost everybody is pitched in a just-slightly-too-high register. The only exception is Michael Cera, from “Arrested Development” and “Superbad,” who doesn’t change his understated delivery one bit, and comes off the better for it.
I had the same feeling watching this movie that I had while watching the previous film from director Jason Reitman, “Thank You for Smoking”: I kept waiting for it to click into gear, because there was enough good about it to raise hopes. But it doesn’t. This is an artificial sweetener at too large a dose.
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