Juno

Jason Reitman, 2007

There have been several unwanted pregnancies on our screens recently. From this summer’s hit comedy Knocked Up (why that was such a success I will never comprehend…), to the bleak Romanian abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days and now Juno the charming teen flick with baby.
The script has been widely celebrated and now even crowned with an Oscar. The film is very good, but that good? The beginning turns out to be very hard work, the film is dreadfully boring and the dialogue trying way too hard. Then it suddenly turns around masterfully. The minute Juno makes a decision and tells her parents about the baby the narrative picks up speed and is finally at ease with itself.
Juno (Ellen Page) is a cool rather than trendy, disarming 16year old who decides to have the baby and give it up for adoption. The chosen parents (Jennifer Garner & Jason Bateman) are found in an adoption add. The films determination to fight stereotyping by radically debunking it, is its greatest achievement. At first Jennifer Garner’s character seems hopelessly tense and baby-starved while her laid-back, yet-to-be-discovered musician husband is ever so cool, soon the coin flips however and the movie puts away with this sympathetic and infantile loser type that seems to crop up far too often these days. Similarly the working woman that longs for a baby is not an annoying lunatic, complex-laden and humour-less nightmare of formerly mentioned men and hardcore feminists alike but one of the most sympathetic figures in the movie. Jennifer Garner has never been this good.
The entire cast is great and Ellen Page’s Oscar nomination very deserved. The film is immensely colourful and underscored with a picture-book Indiefilm soundtrack. It fires endless one-liners at its audience and skilfully balances between laugh-out-loud moments and the utter sadness that is essential to the story.
Juno lives in an age where abortion is an equal option for the girl. The fact that she decides against it, is not condemning those who do. It is still a shame, that the scene in the abortion clinic depicts the pro-life demonstrator outside equally miserable as the personnel inside.
Juno is a very good film that seems to be just like its heroine, thoroughly good-hearted yet quite irritating at times.