By Eric Kohn

Juno
Directed by Jason Reitman


Some movies are loved and reviled for the same reasons. Juno provides a textbook example. Light, cute and conventional, this disarmingly funny portrait of the eponymous snarky teenager (Ellen Page), whose liaison with a high school crush (Michael Cera) lands her a bun in the oven, plays out as formulaic and unsurprising as the superlatives at the beginning of this sentence. Still, there’s a charm to the way the innocence of its design is challenged only by the elegant individualism of its memorably cynical protagonist.

The obvious compliment: Movies like this don’t come along very often. The real compliment: Movies like this do come along very often, but they’re usually smothered in sentimental mush.

Juno borrows rhythms from any number of contrived teen comedies, but it re-energizes them with dialogue that sparkles. It’s relentlessly fun, a goal it tries quite hard to accomplish. There are zingers and asides that work while others implode, but the characters each sport distinctive quirks so that bringing them together creates a relentlessly entertaining fusion of disparate personalities. When Juno informs her parents (JK Simmons and Allison Janney) of the pregnancy, the words circulate throughout the room as though trapped in a pinball machine. “I was hoping she was expelled or into hard drugs,” Janney sighs. “Or a DWI,” adds Simmons. But they don’t yell or condescend to their spunky kid; we witness their transition from disbelief to acceptance in a single unit of conversation.

The stream of accolades surrounding Juno has helped turn its first-time screenwriter, Diablo Cody, into a burgeoning star. Of course, it’s rare for scribes to get this kind of attention, and Cody’s showbiz future will prove whether or not there’s any merit to this kind of hype. For now, the attention she has received makes sense. While the director, Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking), handles the pace, the movie is truly a beast set loose by its screenplay.

Page makes the lead role work as a way to tame that beast. Having proven her slick delivery and richly engaging penchant for understatement in David Slade’s Hard Candy—where her character imprisons a pedophile and sets out to serve justice—Page elaborates on that solitary ferocity by working it into a credible framework. In fact, the anonymous girl in red that Page plays in Hard Candy could be Juno herself. Slade’s film begs to be rewatched in that context. 

Page, a 21-year-old actress with bustling energy and a subtle sense of humor much like her character, plays Juno as an adorable puppy hipster, nipping at the heels of anyone trying to be smarter than her. The rest of the cast is equally strong, including Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner as parents trying to adopt Juno’s incoming child and the amusingly gruff Simmons as her father. Together, these performances form the real star of the show: unvarnished, utterly shameless wit. Juno might have too many smug one-liners, but such indulgence reflects the smirking contrarian finesse of teen rebellion.