'Juno': A grating teen's coming-of-age tale

By Michael Sragow | Sun Movie Critic

December 21, 2007

(C+) The deceptively smug teen comedy Juno uses an arsenal of hipper-than-hip verbiage to tell a teeny tiny story about a pregnant, middle-class teenage girl, Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page), and the upper-middle-class couple, Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), who agree to adopt her baby.

The movie has been hailed and marketed as this year's Little Miss Sunshine (the promotion seems inseparable from some of the reviews), but it has none of that movie's empathy and comic surprise. Too much of it is like a subpar episode of Freaks and Geeks, padded out to 92 minutes with pseudo-witty dialogue.

The screenwriter, Diablo Cody, has mastered a couple of distinct-yet-foul verbal forms. What made my teeth ache first weren't the one-liners, but the one-and-a-half liners - joined staccato taunts or declarations. When Juno goes to purchase her third home pregnancy test, the drugstore clerk (The Office's Rainn Wilson) regales her with, "Your eggo is preggo, no doubt about it!" Juno orders, "Silencio! I just drank my weight in Sunny D, and I have to go, pronto!"

But I began to prefer even those to the run-on voice-over monologues that serve to compensate for poor scene-setting and nonexistent dramaturgy, such as Juno's stream of cliches about "jocks" always wanting "freaky girls, girls with horn-rimmed glasses and vegan footwear and Goth makeup, girls who play the cello and wear Converse All-Stars and want to be children's librarians when they grow up."

If you think this welter of trendy references constitutes fresh and original writing, you might love Juno. It certainly won't be for the characterizations, which hem in most of the wily, gifted cast. Although the movie calms down and becomes more bearable at roughly the half-hour mark, it never stops being as self-adoring as its all-too-feisty heroine.

It's a relief that Juno's dad and stepmom (J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney), initially presented as clueless eccentrics, come into focus as sane and salty parents. But like everyone else in this movie, they're almost always judged by how protective they are of Juno.

It's refreshing that the father of Juno's baby, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), a straight-A student and member of the cross-country team, displays backbone without breaking his sweet, modest character.

But too much of the movie centers on the risky, undefined bond Juno develops with Mark Loring, a one-time rocker who writes jingles and isn't as delirious about the prospect of parenthood as his wife; you see what's coming as soon as he and Juno start sharing their favorite music and slasher movies.

The director, Jason Reitman, has a fond touch with performers and helps Bateman ground this stock figure in simmering emotion. But Garner gives the performance of the film; she turns type-A traits that could be annoying, such as her worry over which shade of yellow to paint a nursery, into touching expressions of her incandescent desire for maternity. When she unselfconsciously coos over other people's children or reacts with delight to the kicking in Juno's belly, the film develops some rooting interest: You want Vanessa Loring to have her baby.

You just hope she won't turn out too much like Juno.

>>>Juno (Fox Searchlight) Starring Ellen Page, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner. Directed by Jason Reitman. Rated PG-13. Time 92 minutes.

michael.sragow@baltsun.com