Juno (2007)
Directed by Jason Reitman
Faced with an unplanned pregnancy, sixteen year old high-schooler, Juno MacGuff, makes an unusual decision regarding her unborn child.
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31 films that influenced Juno
What critics say influenced Juno
Director Jason Reitman ( Thank You for Smoking ) keeps things brisk, occasionally employing cutesy visual flourishes that mostly work; it reminded me a bit of Heathers (1989), and if it doesn't get too much Oscar hype, it could be a future cult favorite.
Look to something like Heathers for how to write absurdist dialogue--that film along with Clerks the chief antecedents for Juno, which isn't as good as either because it wears its hipster cred like a chip on its shoulder.
Cody, who came to prominence by writing a memoir of her year working as a stripper, recalls that she read the script Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff wrote for "Ghost World," and that film's strengths are evident here.
Her Juno could be a distant cousin of Enid and Rebecca, the gothic-minded teenage girlfriends in 2001's "Ghost World."
Her hero, the smart, too-cool-for-any-room Juno McGuff (named after Zeus' wife, natch) talks like no one in the movies -- her closest cousin may be Enid from Ghost World, but the barrage of ambiguously ironic jargon Juno unleashes would make even Enid's head spin.
Like a cross between Rory Gilmore and one of the Ghost World teens, Juno has a ready supply of snappy, pop culture–riffing cynicism (she’d call it pragmatism).
Page�s Juno is in the mold of Enid from Ghost World, a whip-smart teen who has all the answers even though she hasn�t experienced many of the questions yet.
Ghost World 's Enid outclasses Juno with her ruthless lack of sentiment.
Ellen Page’s performance reminded me of Jason Schwartzman’s debut in “Rushmore.”
The pacing and soundtrack are wholly indebted to Wes Anderson's Rushmore.
Not that the movie is heavy lifting; it trades in the sort of stylized quirk probably inaugurated by Wes Anderson and Rushmore, it�s loaded � borderline overloaded � with twee little acoustic songs with clever lyrics, and its style and content will mark it among cynics as Napoleon Dynamite meets Knocked Up.
On the scale of movies like Rushmore that have a lot of heart and genuine energy to it and self-conscious, hollow tripe like Garden State, Juno falls somewhere in between.
Actually, I can recall only one American movie in which a pregnant teenager gets an abortion, and that was Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), with Jennifer Jason Leigh as the unwilling mother.
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For her part, Ms. Page, a Canadian newcomer, has received notices likening her emerging performance to that of Audrey Hepburn in William Wyler’s Roman Holiday (1953), and the parallel drawn is no exaggeration.
In some of these scenes, Cody's writing seems to sacrifice clarity for hip pop-culture allusions; would a guy like Mark who played in a band that toured with the Melvins really be unfamiliar with 1970s Patti Smith and Iggy Pop music; and would Juno -- a professed fan of stylish Italian horror auteur Dario Argento -- really find Herschell Gordon Lewis' cheesy "The Wizard of Gore" superior to "Suspiria" after Mark convinces her to watch the Lewis film?
In fact, Juno's working-class dad and stepmother -- beautifully played by Simmons and Allison Janney -- may be the coolest parents in movie history, or at least since Frederic Forrest and Colleen Camp in 1983's "Valley Girl" (directed if not scripted by a woman, Martha Coolidge).
The lighthearted, comical treatment of a very serious issue may well be lapped up by the repressed, chattering classes (in a similar vein to the overrated Little Miss Sunshine), but Juno's self-conscious quirks don't always have the desired effect.
I suspect Juno will fall victim to a Little Miss Sunshine-sized backlash – trade in Sunshine's pop art for Juno's loving stencils, and you have a fairly obvious overlap in theme and sensibility.
Positioned as this year’s Little Miss Sunshine (2006), marketed as a “quirky comedy” with a big to-do over the fact that first-time screenwriter Diablo Cody (born Brook Busey) is a former stripper, Juno came equipped with a lot to live up to—or to live down, depending on your outlook.
Bursting at the seams with razor-sharp dialogue, expert direction from Jason Reitman and a star-making performance from 20-year-old Ellen Page in the title role, “Juno” is a cinematic breath of fresh air that’s guaranteed to be a sleeper hit along the lines of “Little Miss Sunshine.”
Many are comparing Juno to Little Miss Sunshine , which is a fair comparison.
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And in fact it's about as indie as that 2006 hit, which is to say not very: Director Jason Reitman is a scion of Hollywood (his dad is "Ghostbusters" director Ivan Reitman), and the cast includes such struggling unknowns as Jennifer Garner ("Alias"), Allison Janney ("The West Wing"), Michael Cera ("Superbad"), and Jason Bateman.
Consider director Jason Reitman — son of famed director Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Stripes) — with his second directorial effort Juno, he has now successfully made two incredibly smart and overwhelmingly well received films.
In some of these scenes, Cody's writing seems to sacrifice clarity for hip pop-culture allusions; would a guy like Mark who played in a band that toured with the Melvins really be unfamiliar with 1970s Patti Smith and Iggy Pop music; and would Juno -- a professed fan of stylish Italian horror auteur Dario Argento -- really find Herschell Gordon Lewis' cheesy "The Wizard of Gore" superior to "Suspiria" after Mark convinces her to watch the Lewis film?