Director: Jason Reitman | Writer: Diablo Cody
Starring: Elliot Page, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner, Michael Cera, JK Simmons
Year: 2007 | IMDb rating: 7.5/10
Juno is just the sweetest little movie, a mix of blunt reality and idiosyncratic dialogue that helps create a story worth the heartbreak. Plus, it’s got a killer soundtrack, so pleasant and bizarre, which helps the flow of the film and the feel of the mood. Juno doesn’t do anything wrong, that’s the big surprise; it’s simply a lovely and loving tale of growing up, making mistakes, but not hating yourself or the world for it.
Juno is a quirky teenager who just made one small blunder; getting pregnant. Now she’ll have to deal with where her choices led her, and she’ll have to develop a maturity far beyond her few years. She decides to give the baby up for adoption, and she quickly meets a very nice couple who have always wanted a child. But growing up pregnant is no simply feat, and Juno will have to use every ounce of her whit and tenacity to make it through undamaged.
I’m not sure if ‘gem’ has every been used more appropriately than with this movie. Juno is short, sweet, honest, uncomplicated, and steers away from melodrama so smartly that we should all stand up and applaud. This is how you make a film well and succinctly, how you tell a story and introduce characters with talent and with cleanliness. Beyond that, the heart infused into every scene, the nostalgia of coming of age, the errors we all made, every layer of truth, is just so refreshing that you’ll want to take a big breath of this film and never let it out. Page is brilliant, all the side actors help so much, you’re rooting for Juno the whole way, the script it intelligent and unusual; you could point to this movie, as niche as it seems, as a real example of exactly what to do.
My rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★