{"id":4547,"date":"2007-11-28T23:59:05","date_gmt":"2007-11-29T04:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=4547"},"modified":"2007-11-28T23:59:05","modified_gmt":"2007-11-29T04:59:05","slug":"juno-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/28\/juno-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Juno (2007)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2147a5c9218f49a0a1eb63d946b82dc51-300x225\"<\/a>I admit that I was worried about this film for the first twenty minutes. I was bored, I was thinking \u201cWho are they kidding?\u201d, and I noticed the shocking similarity to \u201cImmediate Family.\u201d But then my mind was changed once Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner were introduced. Don\u2019t get me wrong, Ellen Page does wonders with this film as she provides yet another great performance as the title character who pretty much experiences something sadly not out of the ordinary in today\u2019s society. She\u2019s a sixteen year old who after a night of drinking and heavy kissing, finds herself pregnant.<\/p>\n

After three tries she finally admits it to herself and is ready to rid herself of it by finding adoptive parents. Thankfully, it\u2019s not all about pregnancy and a pro-life message because you come for the charming story, and you must stay for the performance by the adorable and talent Ellen Page who should really be around more these days; you have to credit Ellen who takes clunky one-liners intended as off the wall and saves them with her delivery and charm. Regardless, the character of Juno, when not being pounded over our heads with her idiosyncrasies is actually an adorable character. She\u2019s rough around the edges, crass, and has no idea what discretion means, and Ellen Page just leads this film away from indie tedium. It doesn\u2019t thankfully provide us with easy answers, happy endings, or convenient plot twists, it\u2019s merely just a story about a girl who wants a good life for her unborn child, and finds instead friends and a glance at a real relationship.<\/p>\n

\u201cJuno\u201d takes a dip into the norm when she meets her parents to be Vanessa and Mark. They\u2019re a happy couple, a couple who live in a very strategic life of stale colors, and sanitary suburbia until Juno basically insinuates herself into their fold and takes a liking to Mark who is basically a man-child who connects with Juno instantly. This creates an awkward triangle as Vanessa wants to keep Juno a stranger. The performances from both Garner and Bateman are a highlight as they\u2019re written with complex shades of unfulfilled fantasies, longing, words unsaid, and a life that clearly doesn\u2019t work for either of them. Bateman provides his usual deadpan comedic touch even though he\u2019s mainly a tragic portrait of a stifled dreamer and he just gets all the funniest dialogue; meanwhile Jennifer Garner is not completely a shrew who really just wants normality, and mostly a child to care for.<\/p>\n

She wants a family but isn’t quite sure what type of family she needs. Garner and Bateman add a real dramatic atmosphere to the film without ever weighing the film down. Cody keeps them fascinating and rich in characterization, and never turns them into a clich\u00e9 pairing. With this couple, and her ensuing birth Juno doesn\u2019t only learn about life, she comes of age and realizes that babies don\u2019t automatically make everything better and keep us together; it\u2019s more about the relationships we tailor and build with each other. Brody always finds a great balance between teen angst and relationship dichotomy and builds upon the questions he poses. Will Juno give up the baby? Will Vanessa be disappointed yet again? Will this experience teach Juno anything? When it\u2019s not trying to be edgy and clever, it\u2019s a damn good answer to these interesting questions.<\/p>\n

Writer Cody tries too hard at times to push this whole unusual rebellious personality that Juno is supposed to have and he makes sure to force it down our throats at every turn just for us to get a sense of how out of place she\u2019ll be among everyone, when really she\u2019s not too unusual to begin with. Cody\u2019s characters are much too self-aware and clever to take seriously, and I found myself often rolling my eyes. Characters are named Liberty Bell and Bleaker, and Juno is tailored to look very unique and really doesn\u2019t. She chews a pipe, uses old furniture she finds in fields, listens to punk rock, and swears a lot; wow, this girl could be from another planet! When Cody isn\u2019t forcing us to think of Juno as a pariah, she becomes awfully charming and that\u2019s through her ho hum nature of giving a baby to a couple who wants it.<\/p>\n

Michael Cera is given a great portion of the promotional poster, and sadly he is just plain underused. He has a very minimal supporting performance and really only serves as the obligatory love interest for our character Juno, and he really only becomes utilitarian in the end. Cera\u2019s talents are never fully explored in \u201cJuno,\u201d and that\u2019s a waste of someone who was in \u201cSuperbad.\u201d Though it tries too often to be cutesy and self-aware, \u201cJuno\u201d is actually a surprisingly great little dramedy with banner performances from the respective cast of Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner, JK Simmons, and Ellen Page who just owns the role of Juno and makes this movie so damn good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I admit that I was worried about this film for the first twenty minutes. I was bored, I was thinking \u201cWho are they kidding?\u201d, and I noticed the shocking similarity to \u201cImmediate Family.\u201d But then my mind was changed once Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner were introduced. Don\u2019t get me wrong, Ellen Page does wonders […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[219,302,319,340,515,874],"class_list":["post-4547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy","tag-drama","tag-ellen-page","tag-family","tag-j","tag-romance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}