Blog From The Bench

Juno
Director: Jason Reitman

Following up his debut film Thank You For Smoking at the Toronto International Film Festival two years ago, Jason Reitman (son of prolific comedic director Ivan Reitman) returns with his sophomore effort, Juno, a quirky teen comedy about open adoption. So, he goes from tobacco lobbyists, right into teen pregnancy? You gotta give it to the guy, he likes a comedic challenge.

Like Knocked Up set a generation back with sixteen year-olds instead of thirty-somethings, Juno thrives on embarrassment and teenage ridiculousness to fuel its comedic flames; not in the style of a typical profanity-laden gross-out teen comedy, but one that utilizes wit and panache, quick alliterations and wordplay to achieve its laughs. By today’s filthy standards, it barely even curses, which is unexpectedly refreshing in a comedy. Imagine instead a John Hughes film on methamphetamines, the coming-of-age quirks and teen angst sped up to lucrative speeds to keep pace with the current generation. The end result is a surprisingly tender and romantic comedy full of acerbic wit, snappy dialogue, outrageous performances and a tour-de-force performance from young Canadian actress Ellen Page (Hard Candy).

Sixteen year-old hipster Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) has a problem. After a night of exploration with her dorky boyfriend Bleeker (Michael Cera, Superbad) she winds up pregnant and completely unprepared as to what to do. She considers an abortion, but gets freaked out and decides to give the kid up in an open adoption instead. Except that she isn't about to give her baby up to dorks—she might be totally unprepared for motherhood, but she has standards, after all. Though a newspaper ad, she meets a young yuppie couple, Vanessa (Jennifer Garner, Elektra) and Mark (Jason Bateman, Arrested Development) looking to adopt a baby. Mark has mixed feelings about being a father, but Juno thinks she's found the perfect couple—Mark has great taste in music and bad horror films, just like her. But as her body begins to burst outwards, high school becomes a surreal experience, and she still needs to come to terms with her feelings for Bleeker.

For his sophomore film, director Jason Reitman has laid to rest any doubts about his cinematic and comedic talents behind the camera. The man has talent, a clear vision about his own voice as a director beyond the shadow of his father. He will be one to watch down the road. As for the cast, Page is perfectly attuned to Juno MacGuff and brings the character to life as one of the most charming and lovable comedic heroines put to screen in recent memory, a role that, having seen her in person at TIFF, seems in perfect harmony with her own natural, slightly spastic personality. In terms of acting and casting, Juno makes superb use of its talent base. Young Michael Cera is making himself a nice, lucrative career as the awkward, nerdy-but-loveable goof, a role here perfectly suited to his talents. Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman and Allison Janney all hold their own against the youngsters, the latter in particular knocking the crowd out with her dialogue.

From start to finish, Juno is outlandishly hilarious, balancing between cockle-warming family drama and zany teen comedy, diving deeply into the uncharted comedic waters of open adoption and teen pregnancy with steady resolve. At no point is the film exploitative; it treats the subject with a quirky blend of respect and sarcasm, pushing no agenda of any kind and avoiding any of the more “Lifetime Movie of the Week” plot points one might expect, given the film’s subject matter. After all, this is Juno, a sixteen year-old art-rock girl in a small town who listens to the The Stooges and The Moldy Peaches, plays the guitar, flips the bird to convention and makes every single male under the age of thirty fall madly in love with her wit and charm. Imagine a Daniel Clowes comic stripped of all the awkwardness and borderline cruelty to its protagonists, like a feel-good version of Ghost World.

The screenplay is spectacular, doubly so coming from a first-time writer. Dialogue is witty, fast and hilarious, with the kind of polished banter that practiced scribes struggle with for years to achieve in their work. Young blogger turned stripper turned author Diablo Cody is a natural, having given birth to wonderful, fully articulated and realized characters that are as eccentric as they are lovable. As a screenwriter, her voice feels fresh and new, an outsider’s take on how a Hollywood comedy should be, and it tore through the crowd like a chainsaw. People were tumbling from out of their chairs, split sides everywhere. The banter flows out like a torrential river, perfectly timed and riotous. As comedies go, Juno is as solid as they come.

I had to really rack my brain to find fault with Juno. Literally, the film got a standing ovation, and deserved every second of it. So here goes. Being a screenplay from a first-time writer, Juno is at times guilty of doing what all first-time screenplays ultimately do: cramming too much into too few pages. A subplot with Jason Bateman’s character struggling with his maturity paralleling that of Juno eats up an awful lot of screen time, probably more than it should. The two characters bond over their similar qualms about growing up—her, a sixteen year-old entering maturity too fast, him a thirty year-old refusing to mature at all—but his anxieties are perhaps best left for another film. You know; a film about a slacker Generation X-guy who must face his fear of maturity and childbirth. (Sound familiar? I already compared the two movies earlier. It starts with a “K”.) Worse, this subplot dalliance occurs at the exclusion of Bleeker’s character, who essentially vanishes for the entire second act. A minor criticism, this—after all, Bateman is perfectly cast in the role, and the sequences are laced with pop-culture goodness and great music. Still, in a film that feels so perfect and original in ever other way, Juno feels like it wanders off topic on this small point ever-so-slightly, like the tiniest unbalanced section of weight on an otherwise perfectly spinning comedic wheel.

Quirky, charmingly off-beat and heartwarming, Juno is a rousing success from top to bottom, and a phenomenal sophomore effort for Reitman. If there is a more enjoyable and hilarious film at the Toronto Film Festival this year, I probably won’t get to see it. Alarmingly, Juno is set for only a limited release in December, but this is but a temporary situation, I assure you. Thus far, reviews for Juno are universally glowing, and once the buzz picks up, Juno is going to landslide audiences, mark my words.

Juno effortless chalks itself up as one of the best comedies of the year. Teenage pregnancy should always be this funny.

Verdict: 95/100