While few would consider the issue of teenage pregnancy a laughing matter, first time screenwriter Diablo Cody has crafted an intelligent comedy around the subject. Juno (Ellen Page) is a sixteen-year-old high school student who becomes pregnant after her first sexual encounter. “It’s probably just a food baby,” says 16-year-old Juno’s best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) when Juno announces she’s pregnant. (On a phone crafted to be a cheeseburger, no less) “Did you have a big lunch?”
Ellen Page headlines a cast of actors that brings laughs and realism to the group of dysfunctional characters that inhabit the film. Juno MacGuff is one of those millions of high schoolers, who go through those years virtually unnoticed–too intellectually curious to be popular and too astute to care–most of us can identify with Juno. If we weren’t like her in high school, we likely remember someone who was. Juno listens to ’70’s punk bands and watches obscure horror films. In her off hours, she hangs out with her best friend Leah and tries to make sense of the world around her. Page is able to give Juno an amazing level of maturity, while still allowing her to act like a typical sixteen-year old girl when she has to deal with issues involving her parents Mac (J.K. Simmons) and Bren MacGuff (Allison Janney).
The cast also includes Michael Cera as Juno´s friend and the father of her child, Paulie Bleeker. Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner portray the presumptive adoptive parents, Vanessa and Mark Loring. The Lorings live in a neighborhood that looks like it was created by Martha Stewart. While Vanessa is very uptight and obsessed with becoming a mother, Mark seems stuck in adolescence, a man in his mid-thirties still dreaming of becoming a rock star and finding the perfect horror movie.
The film takes us through all nine months of Juno’s pregnancy. For the most part she treats the whole thing as a temporary inconvenience. Page maintains Juno’s wisecracking exterior throughout the film, bur manages to show Juno’s deeper emotional feelings in flashes of dramatic brilliance. There is also a certain point in the film when the audience is left to wonder if the relationship between Juno and Mark will wade into dangerously inappropriate territory.
Despite my initial reservations, Juno turned out to be a fun film with lots of laughs and plenty of quotable lines. I never would have imagined that a film about a sixteen-year-old girl who gets pregnant and puts the baby up for adoption could be funny without stooping to the juvenile humor of Knocked Up. Diablo Cody deserved the Oscar she received for Best Original Screenplay.
Juno is presented in its theatrical aspect ratio (1.85:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 displays) and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound.
The Juno DVD contains a commentary by director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody. They discuss the challenges of filming in four different seasons and general production issues. Eleven deleted scenes (20:20) are also included which can be viewed with or without commentary from Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody. A gag reel of botched takes and line flubs follows (5:10). There is also a “Screen tests” (22:30) segment that shows most of the cast’s original screen tests.
