Juno (2007)

the audience applauded

Overrated and overhyped

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

A salient, yet echoing tale. Teens superficially pretend to be naïve, (isn't that what they're supposed to be) they aren't.

Characters - Not a single character is believable. The dialogue is terrible and so are all the actors. You'd get a more convincing performance out of waving some blocks of wood in front of a camera. Sights and Sounds - The cinematography is really boring. Everything looks as cheap as you can make live action. For some reason half the sets look like green screen. The visual quality itself isn't even that great. What little music there is is bland and forgettable. Story - This story is really really boring. It may be unpredictable, but that's because its hard to tell what's going to happen because the plot is such a mess. Is the mom going to make a race joke? Oh, she did. Wasn't expecting that, but it was boring and offensive. Is the teacher going to be sexist? Didn't see that coming because its not funny or interesting so why was it there? Oh look, a whole subplot making fun of gay people. I'm offended, bored, and mildly surprised. This movie could've worked if it understand how shock humor was. Every joke (I'm assuming that they were supposed to be jokes as this is listed as a comedy) is designed to offend someone from most minorities to teachers to parents to teenagers to anyone with some level of basic intelligence. I got about 1/2 or 2/3 of the way through this morning (I got to the scene where the main character and the gay character are jumping on the bed pretending to have sex at a party while half the class listens through the window, excited that the MC is "turning" the gay kid) before stopping. I can't see anyone who didn't get offended at some point not just stopping because of how boring this movie is. I'm not exaggerating when every scene drags on and on. Most comedy doesn't work unless its fast paced. This movie is also listed as a drama, but the acting is too bad for there to actually be any drama.Really I have nothing else to say except "don't watch this movie." It is so, so bad.

Oh yeah, just what we need, a movie that role models the glory of teenage pregnancy that makes it look like a normal, every day, kickin' thing to do. I defy anyone to find me a teenage girl like Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) who can be as glib as she was considering her condition, with the confidence to blurt out multiple cultural references at the drop of a hat. Come to think of it, prospective adoption mother Vanessa Loring (Jennifer garner) wasn't much better - custard or cheesecake? - good grief! At that point I didn't know whether the movie was a cutesy treatment of teenage angst or an outright spoof of the Millennial generation. Scratch that, there didn't seem to be any angst here at all.The biggest problem I had with the entire movie was Juno's flippant attitude with just about everything that came her way. Can anyone be that disconnected from real life situations that have the potential to be life altering in unforeseen ways? The mid-stream course reversal by Mark Loring (Jason Bateman) also seemed to come out of left field. It sounded like the couple was trying for a baby for a long time, and now that one was on the horizon, he bails on his wife? The one thing I'm glad of is that the picture didn't have him make an outright play for Juno, because it looked like things were leaning in that direction with a couple of the set ups.One thing I liked - this is only the second film I've ever seen that carried a reference to my favorite Seventies rock 'n roll band - Mott the Hoople. I never ran across anybody else who ever heard of them. In case you're wondering, the other picture was "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore".

I watched "Juno" with a younger (teenaged) sibling hoping that it would provide a good mix of comedy and drama. While the film strives to do just that, it fails to truly define itself in any genre.For a basic plot summary, the movie focuses on Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page), a 16-year old girl who has sex with fellow student/friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) and ends up pregnant. Because Juno does not want to terminate the pregnancy, she seeks out a potential adoptive family in Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) & Mark (Jason Bateman) Loring. Things seem to be going about as well as can be expected for such a tricky situation...at least until the end of the pregnancy approaches.Here is the major problem I had with Juno (and hence the one-star rating): It's almost as if the filmmakers said "lets combine 'Knocked Up' & 'Napolean Dynamite' into one movie". A decent idea, but it fails pretty miserably here. It isn't nearly as funny as Napoleon Dynamite, and it doesn't come close to Knocked Up in heart. Simply put, the comedy isn't funny enough to sustain itself, while the drama isn't on par with other films of the same ilk.Another issue? I think that Ellen Page's portrayal of Juno is either hit or miss...no middle ground. I thought her character was annoying and just plain stupid for most of the film, which made the ending (which I will not ruin here) seem almost farcical to me. To me, Juno was one of the most poorly written characters I've ever seen on screen. I didn't empathize with her a single time, which obviously needs to happen if one is to enjoy the experience. The teenager I watched it with? She could have booted up the film again right away, so go figure. Maybe being a teen is needed to "get" Juno's character.Thus, to me, "Juno" was a film that didn't make any emotional connections with me in the slightest. Right away, I felt like it was almost blatantly ripping off Napolean Dynamite (which isn't a great film in its own right, but at least some of its humor is timeless), while at the same time trying to cover a very serious topic. Had they done one or the other, I think I would have liked the film a lot more. As it stands, I view it as a rather convoluted mess.