Svet,

I respect your opinion, but I’m gonna have to rain on your Juno parade here, cause this movie was horrid. The whole movie felt like Diablo Cody flipped through a couple issues of Under the Radar and read Pitchfork for a week then decided to write a movie about how hip she felt. The dialog was absolutely painful. This whole Garden State trend of pandering to wannabe indie audiences with ten name drops a minutes is growing terribly wearing. The scenes with Ellen Page and Justin Bateman felt so awfully forced. Their characters were contrived as well as their oh so relevant taste in music.

Actually, nearly every time Ellen Page opened her mouth, I wanted to die. No one talks like that. Not a 16-year-old at least, though perhaps a white, upper-class rebellious 20-something stripping on the weekends to ‘escape her coddled past’ attempting to recreate a childhood she never had might.

What’s worse, Diablo isn’t hip. The manufactured kitsch in this movie is vomit inducing. From a hamburger phone to an unhealthy fascination with tic-tacs and sunny d, it’s just a fucking rouse to get urban outfitter shopping fucks to buy into this nonsense.

Also, it’s funny that you enjoyed Michael Cera so much, cause he’s hardly in the film. His character is great, so are most of supporting characters. Why? Cause they don’t fucking talk. There were great actors and actresses in this movie, but a script from hell turned a good idea into a pandering shitfest.

-Ed

i’m definitely going to check this movie out. if for nothing else, the cast (and this review, of course). and if you love michael cera, i am sure you were an arrested development fan, yes?

fyi - Ed did not like this movie.

Ed sucks.

I saw this yesterday and enjoyed every minute of it. Don’t wanna start a “flame war” or anything but I respectfully disagree with Ed on every single aspect of his review. I thought the script was crisp. I thought all the characters were well-drawn especially Juno’s dad and stepmom: their reaction to Juno’s announcement was perfect, in any other movie the parents would get all mad and disown the kid but their reaction spoke to the fact that they actually KNOW Juno. Know her enough to realize that she’s a kid who’s fairly smart but still a kid and therefore capable of doing stupid things. I also loved the stepmom’s reaction to the Ultrasound tech’s condescending comment. The beats of that scene alone (going from tender to tense and ending in cool) is indicative of most of the best scenes in that movie. It’s a perfect example of a screenwriter taking a scene to its typical climax and then digging a bit deeper to give it more humanity.

I thought the scenes between Juno and Teen Wolf Too were perfect. I thought that whole subplot — Juno’s relationship with the adoptive parents — was a welcome surprise. It’s something that very easily could’ve been glossed over but the sript gives it the exact amount of attention it deserves. So much so that it quietly (or maybe not so quietly) becomes the core of the movie.

I also like that while the movie is drenched in rather obvious “hipness” at its core it is not afraid to be sentimental.

There’s so much more I want to say but won’t for fear of giving away too much more about the plot. However, I did want to react to something Ed said about 16 year olds not talking like Juno: for the most part you’re right however A) the movie makes it pretty obvious that Juno’s “not like everyone else” and B) while watching the film I couldn’t help but note how much Juno reminded me of two young ladies that I work with who are respectively nine and eleven years younger than I am and only a few years older than Juno who I could totally see BEING Juno in high school.

(I also like how they reveal the origin of Juno’s name. It’s nothing really profound about it but I dig how what feels like a moment played for laughs in the first half of the movie — and in the film’s trailer — gets fleshed out later on. In a way it’s kind of a microcosm of the movie itself.)

“The whole movie felt like Diablo Cody flipped through a couple issues of Under the Radar and read Pitchfork for a week then decided to write a movie about how hip she felt. The dialog was absolutely painful. This whole Garden State trend of pandering to wannabe indie audiences with ten name drops a minutes is growing terribly wearing.”

That pretty much sums up my review after just seeing the trailer. Great. Unfortunately if I want a BJ I -have- to go see it this weekend.

i loved svetlana’s review, which i read after falling madly and deeply (and perhaps fleetingly) in love with the movie itself.

i also greatly enjoyed ed’s review, though i have very little idea of what he’s on about. everyone can react to the assertions therein (how do i feel about urban outfitters? garden state? pitchfork? under the radar? who cares and what does this have to do with the movie again?) while acknowledging the genius of eduardo’s pithy commentary on ed’s review.

i had no idea who diablo cody is, and, now having read her wiki entry, i can’t say i care. the source of my entertainment is less important than the amount of happy it delivers, and juno delivers it by the pallet-load. also, i’m confused, and maybe i was seeing things, but isn’t michael cera one of the main characters in the film? did someone actually time how long he was on screen? i felt like he was in a lot of it.

anyway.

poor michael. is there anything he *won’t* do for a hummer? i feel for you, man, but there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes while waiting for someone to get out their pole-polish. don’t judge a film by its trailer (though i have yet to see the trailer) - order up a fosters and relax, guy.