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Juno
KvP:
Saw it. The first 20 minutes were excruciating. The dialogue sounds like pureed peppers feel on your junk, especially the Rainn Wilson part. While it got progressively better over time, the script still got irritating here and there throughout.
While the movie definitely has that "indie veneer", it lacked the remoteness of most Anderson-influenced movies like Little Miss Sunshine. In those movies you had characters whose oddness was something of an accessory rather than a quality. There's a gay man, but he's the second most famous Proust scholar in America! And he's suicidally lovelorn for the first! Isn't he Wacky!? Aside from maybe Bleeker's love for tic-tacs, that sort of thing was refreshingly absent from Juno. Most of the characters feel honest and lived-in, and act as real people would. Like a lot of people, I was ready to write the movie off in the first 15 minutes. But when Juno told her parents she was pregnant I started to warm to the film. That's probably due mostly to JK Simmons and Allison Janney, who are dependably excellent as Juno's father and stepmother. Jason Bateman was natural as a self-centered suspended adolescent, and Jennifer Garner was surprisingly convincing as the hopeful mother. It got a little dusty during some of her scenes.
One complaint that I had was with the soundtrack. The last time I was so aware of a soundtrack was while watching Troy. My friend, who hated Juno with a comical passion, said it made him ashamed to like indie rock. I wouldn't go that far, but I did find it unwelcome and distracting at times. They played Boy Least Likely To's "Be Gentle With Me" in the ads, but it didn't make it into the movie, which is a shame, because nothing they played was as good as that song.
I really, really liked it, but then, I'm a mild-mannered and sentimental person, and movies of this nature easily get to me. I can't defend Diablo Cody's script from charges that it's an exercise in self-congratulation, but I thought it made a good movie nonetheless. Better than Little Miss Sunshine. Probably better than The Life Aquatic.
bryanthelion:
I really loved it!
I started to water up in the end.
costacide:
--- Quote from: Inlander on 18 Jan 2008, 05:13 ---
I disagree. Ellen Page's performance is actually, I think, incredibly subtle: at the beginning of the movie Juno is, as you say, a walking comedy show, but it's all front: I think she's actually trying to hide a massive sea of doubt and fear and uncertainty beneath the tough surface, and to me Page manages to convey that through facial expressions and body language and tiny pauses. Like a lot of people, Juno's better at cracking jokes than expressing her genuine emotions. By the end of the movie she's managing to do both.
--- End quote ---
YES
Definitely the main reason I love it...the pause she takes along with her facial expressions when she tells Bleeker she's pregnant is the first sign of it, but it definitely shines through at points.
I mostly try to sum it up to people by telling them she's like every girl I knew when I was 16...a sort of holier-than-though know it all.
doki:
i saw this today, and i was impressed. Ellen Page carried it beautifully, nice story decent soundtrack ladidadida
am i the only one a little concerned that the kid from My Best Friend Is An Alien managed to bed Kitty Pride?
supersheep:
I think Inlander got it spot on. I got Juno as presenting a front of sarky sarcasticnessosity to the world rather than actually being supremely cool and laid back - the nerdyish kid who is kinda cool because of the shell they present, maybe.
I thought it was one of the best films I've seen in quite a while. It's in the same category as Amelie for me, I think - a film I would put on at ten or so at night because I have had a crappy day and am feeling kinda down, so that I can go to bed with a smile on my face. I also thought that it was pretty realistic, at least based on what I remember of being around that age.
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