| JUNO (2007) : J.Reitman : 5/10 |
|
|
 When the Academy awards announced its nine-movie "long-list" for this year's Best Non-English Language Film, there was widespread disbelief - and, in many quarters, anger - that Romania's universally-acclaimed, critically-lauded entry, Palme-d'Or-winning abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, had failed to make the cut. There was much speculation that conservative Academy voters had taken offence at what they may have perceived as writer/director Cristian Mungiu's "pro-choice" stance - although the film is much too canny to take one unambiguous stance on the issue. Now that the full list of nominations has been unveiled, however, the "Mungiu snub" is by no means the principal AMPAS absurdity of 2007/8: that dubious honour surely belongs to the decision to nominate average-to-mediocre teen-pregnancy comedy Juno in four of the biggest categories. If anyone deserves a statuette, it's the studio's Oscar-campaigning department - whose labours resulted in nominations for Best Picture, Best Director (Jason Reitman), Best Original Screenplay (Diablo Cody) and Best Actress (Ellen Page). Of the quartet, only Page's inclusion seems even remotely justified - and she was, needless to say, much more deserving last year when overlooked for her breakthrough turn in the little-seen Hard Candy (which, courtesy of the Florida FCC, prevented The Queen's Helen Mirren from making a royal clean sweep of the year's awards-giving bodies.) Here Page is 16-year-old Juno McGuff, an irrepressible, verbose, countercultural, kooky-quirky high-schooler whose liaison with her on-off boyfriend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) yields an unexpected consequence. Discovering she's up the duff, McGuff's first reaction is to seek an abortion - but, put off by the atmosphere at her local clinic, ultimately decides to go through with the pregnancy and hand over the infant to a deserving couple. The latter she finds via an advert in 'Pennysaver' magazine: well-heeled thirtysomethings Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa (Jennifer Garner). Initially shocked by Juno's news, her parents Mac (J K Simmons) and Bren (Allison Janney) support her decision. But there are problems ahead... The film does have numerous bad scenes - the absolute worst being an unwatchably awful (and borderline-racist) sequence outside the abortion clinic involving Juno and her pro-life school-mate Su-Chin (adorable little Valerie Tian), the latter given the disgracefully thankless task of chanting "All babies want to get borned" (sic) while carrying a placard bearing the slogan "No babies like murdering" (sic). Juno isn't, however, really a bad film as such. The laugh-quotient is low, but enough to keep things watchable, and the zingy interplay between Juno and her various friends and relatives is moderately engaging. But all the while we keep tripping up on the picture's need to establish itself as being as quirky and kooky as its perkily gamine heroine - the chief stumbling-block being Cody's wildly overwritten dialogue. Even critics who like the picture (and that's the majority) praise Page for somehow managing to make this verbiage sound plausible and human - and then, often in the same paragraph, they'll also praise Cody's brilliance with words and the rhythms of teen-speak (she's 29). Second big stumbling-block is Reitman's decision to punctuate nearly all of the scenes with noodling, grating, indie-schmindie guitar/vocal tracks - mostly by Kimya Dawson of The Moldy Peaches - music totally at odds with Juno's own stated preference (Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, etc). Is Reitman seeking to slyly undercut Juno, to suggest she's much more conservative than she'd like to believe? Presumably that's the explanation for one notably odd (and clunky) line where she confuses Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington. At the end of the film, however, Juno and Bleeker perform a duet with guitars - precisely the kind of amblingly cutesy track which has accompanied her adventures from the beginning. This despite her apparently having been "educated" into the delights of Sonic Youth and co by the deceptively square-looking Mark. Indeed, if Juno serves any purpose - other than to reveal the glaring inadequacies of the AMPAS voting system (perhaps they interpret the picture's "message" as pro-life?) - it's to introduce viewers to Sonic Youth (whose 'Superstar' appears on the soundtrack LP, recently #1 on the Billboard chart) and the movies of Dario Argento and Herschell Gordon Lewis, two horror-maestros whose relative merits are hotly debated by Juno and Mark at one key juncture. Reitman even includes a brief extract from Lewis's The Wizard Of Gore - a typically gory sequence of such extremity that it's hard to see how the British censors reckon Juno deserves the mild 12A certificate. Parents (of all ages) beware! Neil Young 22.Feb.08 -------------------------------------------------------------------- USA (/Can/Hun) 96m (BBFC timing) director : Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking.) editor : Dana E Glauberman (Factory Girl, Thank You For Smoking, Heart of the Beholder, etc) seen 19.Feb.08 Sunderland (Empire cinema : £4.80) |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
