"Juno" (2007) - Movie Review

When it requires a five minute scene in between the couple Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) and Mark (Jason Bateman) in choosing the colour of their soon to be kid’s room to completely let us know about everything which is not right in between them, that is where “Juno” gets us. And Bateman and Garner give the perfect cool Mark and devoted woman for being a mother over the screen that we get them for who they are as a couple in those very minimal scenes of them together. The soon to be kid or baby to be precise is to be given by Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) who wants to deal with her unplanned teenage pregnancy and finds Vanessa and Mark sweetly posed in a penny saver magazine presented by her friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby). She is from the hard working economically middle class and mainly has not even started looking at life, while Vanessa and Mark are the well to do high class with Vanessa feels the void in their marriage is the absence of a baby.

The story of course is about the central character Juno who unlike other characters is different. She is the character whose existence in the film as over boosted caricature but also is the nourishment for the story to build. Essentially the film is the development or rather terming the awaiting of the delivery as that is nothing but people being people. Every one is unbelievably true to life. Mark with his casual but straight forward conversation with Juno, Vanessa with her over abundance affection for mothering a baby, the baby’s biological father Paulie Bleaker (Michael Cera) the shy high school love interest of Juno but has the guts to say his thoughts and the father-daughter talk of Mac (J.K. Simmons) to Juno are some mentions of the many scenes of natural happenings.

It is good and running it back over the thoughts feels really funny and profound in various instances. The reason it just does not elevate itself into that extra ordinarily affecting zone is some more scenes of the caliber of the five minute scene between Vanessa and Mark in other characters as such. But to find the balance in overly independent dramatic and mellowed version of it is tough to achieve. Jason Reitman did that in “Thank you for Smoking” which in its satiric comedy has the original intent of independent thought. The platform of course is widely different but we know what Reitman can do.

On seeing Juno played with a command as the character itself by Ellen Page who did creep out as in “Hard Candy” reminds me of Dakota Fanning. Fanning as her has brilliant capability of a child artist when I saw “I am Sam”. Then in the further movies, I started seeing Fanning than the character. Her style started to come out as herself. Ellen Page sure does a great job in this movie and sure is different from “Hard Candy” but I hope not see that “herself” coming out as it did for Fanning in upcoming movies. And for the record I still like Dakota Fanning despite that factor. I hope the notice of that change turns into monotonous acting value.

But let us talk about what the film handles about. Unplanned teenage pregnancy and dealing with as she says “problems beyond her maturity level”. Juno appears to have figured out things for it. As soon as she finds herself pregnant, she decides for abortion and at that point does not inform her parents. Then as she gets in, her school mate Su-Chin (Valeria Tian) while picketing against abortion drops by the teeny little information of fetus having developed finger nails. That is good enough to get Juno out of that place. She then figures out to adopt it out. She does not expect anything and fascinated to see the couple perfect and right of her choice, especially Mark. She does not quite fit the regular senior in high school but actually she is. Mark is the grown version of her and while she does not either love or hate Vanessa, she believes her problems have been figured out. But she still feels something for Paulie and may be a quite a bit of Mark too, which has its moments. And the hormones level in her is just making harder to come on solution for it. Some where in us when we think we are maturing well enough to handle problems and see things way more clearly, these funny little things called emotions involuntarily ticks us so bad that we act on it out of desperation. Juno realizes it and when things come back to square one on what this experience is doing to her and then we realize it is no more a comedy of errors, but the gravity of the situations in our life.

Roger Ebert named it the best film of the year 2007 and could not wait to put on his review to show his affection and love for the film. The movie received high appreciation in very many film festivals. I did not fall in love with the movie as Ebert did. It is an original, funny and lightly emotional material with no hiccups or unwanted scene and also with a cheery soundtrack. That makes it a good movie. I loved Jason Reitman for “Thank you for Smoking” and Ellen Page in “Hard Candy”. I did like them both in this film too but does it make it the best film of the year for me? It is one of the good films of the year for sure.