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the sleeper hit of 2007

The best movie of 2007 snuck out at the last minute to little fanfare. Little fanfare in Jacksonville, that is. I happened to be in Austin, Texas over the holiday and Juno was one of the most celebrated films on screen in town. It was on the cover of magazines and morning news programs were lauding it. Morning news programs don’t often laud films about teenage pregnancy, but this is one of those films that deals with this reality head-on. That isn’t what makes the film great, the greatness comes from the sincere and realistic humor it draws from an otherwise unfortunate and harrowing circumstance.
Juno MacGuff is a sixteen-year old smart ass that goes to high school in the Midwest. She blames a discarded furniture set for the fact that she and her boyfriend, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), decided to “do it.” The opening credits to the film follow Juno to the convenience store as she drinks a gallon of Sunny-D to prep for her third pregnancy test. As she awaits the result before the convenience store clerk (Rainn Wilson) she tries to shake the “unholy” pink plus sign away.
“That ain’t no Etch-A-Sketch. This is one doodle that can’t be undid, home skillet,” said Wilson in his brief opening scene cameo.
Penned by Hollywood’s new middle-American buzz angel, Diablo Cody, this clever and hilarious film deals with a hard subject in all the right ways. Juno gets scared away from the “Women Now” abortion clinic because it smells like a dentists’ office and decides to have the baby and give it up for adoption. She looks for the adoptive parents in the local Pennysaver and finds Mark and Vanessa Loring (Michael Bateman and Jennifer Garner), a loving couple that is desperate for a child.
At first glance Mark and Vanessa Loring strike Juno as the cheesiest yuppie family on earth, but she soon discovers that Mark Loring is a musician, like Juno. Mark is more into the mid-nineties rock, whereas Juno is a lover of mid seventies punk. The Lorings are anxious but trepiditious, as they have arranged for adoption before and had that parent back out at the last minute.
“If I could squeeze the kid out right now and give it to you, I would, but I think we ought to let it get just a little cuter,” Juno tells the Lorings.
Mark and Juno hit it off and the relationship between them fosters over Herschell Gordon Lewis gore films and Japanese comics. Mark writes jingles for advertising agencies but secretly longs for his old life in a traveling rock band. Vanessa and Juno also develop a friendship, but it happens at an oddly different pace. Director Jason Reitman proves to be just as adept behind a camera as his father Ivan Reitman was, with impeccable comedic timing, perfect companion music, and an exquisitely paced and delivered story with the right mix of charm and wit.
The brilliance of the direction is largely made possible by the brilliance of the script. From the witty dialogue that newcomer Ellen Page delivers with a natural fervor as the teenage Juno to the age-appropriate, although still surprising, wit that comes from Juno’s step-mother (Allison Janney) and the other characters in the story. After seeing this film you will want to start using the term “wizard” instead of “cool.” That is how good the writing is.
Writer Diablo Cody grew up in a middle-American family, went to college and worked a fairly normal job at an advertising agency when she got bored and decided to become a stripper at some of the surliest strip clubs in Minnesota. That’s also when she changed her name. Cody started a blog telling the tales of her adventures in the strip clubs. She still posts to her blog at diablocody.blogspot.com, so you can catch up with not only her archived blogs, which first garnered her fame for her candor and cadence (and won her a book deal), but what is going on with her now as she rises to fame while Juno gets praise from Golden Globes and film festivals across the country.
See this film when you first have the chance, there probably won’t be a better one in all of 2008. Although it does have a heartwarming message at the end, which can often kill a brilliant comedy, you will be pleased with every scene in execution and outcome. If you can’t get enough Wes Anderson, you will adore Juno. It is sharp, smart, and still somehow pulls off morality even better than Napoleon Dynamite. People are saying it is this year’s Little Miss Sunshine, but this film outweighs Sunshine in a big way. Little Miss Sunshine was last year’s Juno.