Juno

Like books, I’m behind in writing about which films I’ve seen recently. So lets try to catch up in reverse order, starting with the film I saw last night – Juno. I know quite a few bloggers saw it at a special screening that I couldn’t make before Christmas and the reaction to it was pretty positive.
I’m going to agree with them because I thought it was a wonderful little film. Juno is a 16 year old girl who’s a bit of an outcast at school, but who’s managed to become pregnant. A visit to Women Now doesn’t inspire her to have an abortion – perhaps less for moral reasons than the general awfulness of the place. A classmate acting as a lone picket outside the clinic tells her that her baby already has fingernails. This doesn’t really make a great deal of difference to her.
Having decided to keep the baby, she and her friend go through the freesheet newspapers looking for a likely set of adoptive parents. The perfect couple turns out to be Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner who are desperate to have a baby.
That’s the bare bones of the plot, but it doesn’t really scratch the surface. The dialogue is punchy, fizzing with aphorisms, lending it a very “quirky” humour. Sorry. I like to avoid that word. But it’s pretty appropriate here. Indeed it’ll definitely be worth seeing again on DVD for the dialogue alone.
And the casting is exceptional. Ellen Page plays Juno, and I’ve not come across her before, although I do know that I need to see Hard Candy. Her maybe-boyfriend is played by Michael Cera who’s best known as George-Michael in Arrested Development. Filling out the cast are JK Simmons and Alison Janney who play Juno’s father and step-mother.
A subtle comedy like this could easily become schmaltzy if it wasn’t careful, but this has a deft lightness of touch that keeps you smiling all the way through.
Thoroughly recommended. It opens in a month’s time.


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