Juno

Only one week into 2008 and "Juno" is up for several awards, among them a Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy) and Screenplay. The only award it deserves is one that doesn't exist: Phoniest Movie of 2007. The script, by Diablo Cody, is almost as horrendous as its writer's pen name: none of its characters are remotely believable; they're just quirkiness personified. It's an unholy marriage of the worst of indie-film snarkiness, "Family Guy"-paced reference slinging and treacle.

The first act seems to be a solipsism centered around sixteen-year-old Juno MacGruff (Ellen Page, whose character's very name is quirky nonsense); she gets knocked up by Paul (Michael Cera) and decides to give her baby up to an older couple (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman). When she meets the surrogate parents, she's a fount of bizarre, insensitive comments, mostly aimed at Garner's consummate yuppie, but they might as well have been directed at Margaret Dumont from an old Marx Brothers movie (although the lines would have been far wittier in that); miraculously, Garner doesn't hear or react to a word of Juno's "zany" antics. Even worse, Bateman is an erstwhile grunge rocker, which gives Juno an opportunity to list all of the cool music she listens to such as Patti Smith and The Stooges. It's nothing but the filmmakers dropping names in order to pick up some free hipster credibility; the whole movie is artificially cool, but truly, deeply square.

(The music that's actually in the movie is folky and somnolent. It reminds me of something Roger Ebert mentioned in his thirtieth anniversary review of "The Graduate": the Simon and Garfunkle soundtrack in that film is "safe"--better suited, therefore, for lackadaisical Benjamin than femme infidel Mrs. Robinson.)

Ironically, the square, "poignant" moments were probably those I liked best, but even the most authentic scene was screwed up by the director, Jason Reitman. Garner is touching Juno's baby-swollen gut and talking to her future child, but the scene is set in the middle of a shopping mall. You'd think someone would think it strange to see a thirty-five-year-old woman groping a pregnant sixteen-year-old's stomach.

And Juno, the "offbeat" teenager who loves hard music, is as saintly square as the teens on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel; she's less punk than puck. The angel's only "sin" is having a single sexual encounter with a boy she loves--the big-hearted school dork. (Cera, as the dork, is one of the strong points of the movie. His lines aren't any better written than Page's, but his sweet, effeminized delivery of them makes the dialogue--if not more believable--more affecting.) Otherwise, she's in a perfectly loving relationship with supportive father and step-mother; off-handed jokes are made about drugs and alcohol, but these things don't seem to physically exist in this universe. Movies with subject matter like this one's are often applauded for being more "realistic" than your average "Can't Hardly Wait" or "Drive Me Crazy," but, despite the pregnancy, I don't think I've ever seen kids (or adults) as well-adjusted as these. This might as well be a "very special episode" of "Father Knows Best."

"Juno" is mildly funny--in a Vaudeville, eye-roller type of way--but it scant deserves any of the laudatory talk it's garnered. James Berardinelli calls it "the kind of the film where a viewer almost needs to look for a reason to dislike it for it not to work." Well, I didn't have to look too far to realize how sloppily plotted this was: key moments of the stories come quickly, illogically and without build-up. For instance, there's no mention of how Juno is treated as the girl-who-got-pregnant at her high school until it's suddenly a big deal (and even then, we see no real evidence of it). Also, Bateman, the likable ex-rocker, turns pedophile douche bag awfully quick; he becomes so low that there's no indication that he plans to even help out with raising the baby after divorcing Garner at the end.

And while my beef with Juno's (and everyone else's) so-called wisecracks may be personal preference, Ellen Page's performance is hardly internalized; she's okay with timing, but all the movie does is have her blab on and on--not as a self-defense mechanism, but bad writing. (In the actress' defense, Juno's dilemma is treated as nothing more important than the usual lovelorn teen-movie girl problems--she wonders if it's really possible for two people to be happy together forever.) Juno acts more sophisticated than she is, but not in the way real girls her age do; she delivers self-conscious lines that make it sound like she's a wizened sixty-year-old living it up in a sixteen-year-old's body. (Juno's friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) seemed more like a real girl of that age and was often funnier to me than the title character.)

I wouldn't be surprised if the reviewers were right and this went on to be the next "Little Miss Sunshine," which despite its sitcom family foibles, had some genuine characters in original situations--and saved its contrivances for the end. "Knocked Up," which, like "Juno," was categorized as "realistic" and "hip," may have actually been; it was easy-going and playful and didn't have to mention the nineteen-seventies punk scene for audience approval. "Juno" pretends to be cooler and funnier than it really is; it's more like a real teenager than any featured in the movie.