My review of JUNO:

Nowadays, it must be hard to be an up-and-coming screenwriter in Hollywood. If you want your script to get any attention from developers/agents/producers/directors, you have to make the first fifteen or twenty pages of your first script as distinctive as possible. In H-town, movers and shakers just don't have enough time to develop sufficient attention spans, so if you get the chance, right away you have to get their attention. With this in mind, this is how I imagine how Diablo Cody wrote the first 15 or 20 pages of her original screenplay for JUNO, because right from the start, you have the elements needed to make a memorable movie-- implicit teen sex, pregnancy, blog-speak dialogue that just too cool for school or your full comprehension. Yet, this go-for-broke approach quickly becomes inundating-- after a while, you want to exclaim, "I get it! Juno is a quirky, unique, fast-talking teenager! Now get on with it!" Or, you think "is this just going to be like GHOST WORLD, only shallow and pregnant?" (Furthermore, considering how twee-rific the movie's look is, you wonder if JUNO's production designer's previous career was being a cool-hunter for marketing companies.)

Yet, as the movie progresses, it becomes less concerned with "sticking out from the crowd" and more concerned with becoming a movie that has an engrossing story and interesting characters. Along those lines, the issue in JUNO isn't "how is Juno (Ellen Paige) going to be a normal teenager and pregnant at the same time?" because Diablo Cody obviously didn't want JUNO to be a revisionist take on the Movie-of-the-Week-Teenage-Pregnancy sub-genre (see FIFTEEN AND PREGNANT starring Kirsten Dunst.) What JUNO is concerned with is representing the mindset of a know-it-all teen and charting her development as she goes through an extraordinary life-situation, as well as how her relationships with her step-mom Bren (Alison Janney,) her dad Mac (J.K. Simmons, in a endearing turn as an understanding patriarch,) the married couple who plan to adopt Juno's baby (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman), and her baby-daddy "friend" Paulie (Michael Cera) develop. And in regards to those things, JUNO succeeds.

So (thankfully) JUNO is a comedy that gets better as it progresses. But, when I was finished I thought, "This movie isn't what I really wanted it to be." Maybe I was mislead by the ad-campaign for JUNO, but I was under the impression that it was going to primarily be about Ellen Paige and Michael Cera's forbidden-teenage-love, which it is, only in part. As I learned from listening to Terry Gross's interview with Diablo Cody and JUNO's director Jason Reitman on FRESH AIR, Cody was inspired to write the script because she wanted to tell a story about adoption (which is what motivated Reitman to sign-on as director of JUNO.) And, as JUNO demonstrates, the crux of the story is Juno's complicated relationship with Vanessa (Garner) and Mark (Batemen,), which I wasn't that interested in. Quite frankly, I found that plot to be predictable and obvious, as well as less-than-insightful.

Maybe I'm just biased because I like Michael Cera as an actor, but I was more interested in Paulie (Cera) and how Juno and Paulie were going to make the transition from 'just friends who are secretly in love with each other' to actual boyfriend and girlfriend. The movie eventually focuses more on Juno and Paulie's relationship, but it comes too little, too late. I don't fault Cody for this-- she didn't cast Cera, Reitman did. But I have a feeling that as his career progresses, Cera won't always be cast as second fiddle because I think Cera has the potential to become the next Jack Lemmon.

But, despite my prerogatives, I enjoyed JUNO. I give it ***1/2 out of *****.

Tags: JUNO, Diablo Cody

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