MUBI

The only reason why I was a bit disappointed by the movie has been the fact that it had been so intensively hyped during last Oscar season. I am not saying it is a bad movie, but it is just your average American teenage movie. The only thing that is giving the movie a hint of indieflick flair is the Moldy Peaches (Kymia Dawson) OST, which was not even the director’s or writer’s idea in the first place. This movie is no Napoleon Dynamite or Eagle vs. Shark, it is heartful but not poetic, it is interesting but not imaginative, the acting is solid but not groundbreaking. All in all, do not believe the hype.

I like Michael Cera, but he really makes too much use of this established on screen persona in this one for my taste. Ellen Page is good though and she can deliver that teeny lingo convincingly. Still, the movie is full of American cliches (all the kids turning in the school to gasp at Ellen, how very John Landis), a stepmother who fights for the stepdaughter (family is about love, not about lineage, yeah right) and so on. Had me cringing here and there.

It is still worth watching and is definetly a nice movie to watch with friends or family, but cineasts should stay away from it.

Hah… diantara film-film gelap yang masuk nominasi Best Picture Oscar tahun ini, Juno adalah yang paling “sehat” dan (seharusnya) menang di kategori tersebut. Anyway, script yang stand out, performance cast yang natural, cerita yang berjalan lancar, mudah dinikmati… Juno is great!

And you know what… I already miss this movie 30 minutes after I watch it. Buat gue kangen buat nonton lagi… Kudos to Michael Cera and Ellen Page for the acts, Diablo Cody for the script, and Jason Reitman for the direction. Film terbaik sepanjang 2007.

Rate: 5 / 5

This movie depressed me, for the most unexpected reason: The critic-intelligensia and their corresponding tweeds gushed unanimous praise onto this movie, and I expect so much better from the mass of them. The only negative reviews I could find of this film (and I was desperate to find them, to validate my dismay) were of the sadly jocular kind found here that might anyway discount the whole range of serious cinema that aspires past instant gratification. The great irony of Juno is that it actually comes from that place, of pathological self-absorption and intoxication, when it is so easily mistaken for a drama with insightful truths. There is no truth in Juno, starting with the billboard-sized dialogue penned by its hyped-up screenwriter Diablo Cody. Who could have imagined that the very critical mass who would properly picket “adult entertainment” clubs, became so enamored of Mistress Cody’s prior career as a stripper? She has publicly boasted of the experience, and her career is unrepentantly built on it. (Her “big break” was her creation of a sex blog called The Pussy Ranch.) This purports to add chic quirk to her universe, when the truth behind the pole is that nothing but tackiness and creep go along with it. Certainly, what it does not bespeak is an understanding of reality.

And that’s the whole problem with Juno, from its ridiculous dialogue to its defiant gloss over teenage pregnancy — an event that, in real life, imposes epic emotions and consequences without exception, excepting this one big-Hollywood financed faux-independent film. Juno is as sophisticated as a strip club wafting the scents of Budweiser and Marlboro, or in another sense, as accessibly fake as a visit to Urban Outfitters. It is once again terribly revealing that another year went by, and the Oscar went to Juno in such a vital category as Original Screenplay. Naturally.

JUNO is a fantastic example of Hollywood wrapping up a movie in indie clothes and selling it to people who think they’re looking for alternatives to the mainstream. JUNO is a terrible movie that is very full of itself and goes out of its way to remind you of how clever it thinks it is. Diablo Cody’s abominable script is full of catch-phrases and one-liners that she surely hopes will find their way into the vernacular of today’s youth, which deserves better than this.

I forced myself to watch this film just so I could earn the privilege of talking about how bad it really is. Juno is just like that person you can’t stand because they’re constantly trying too hard. I don’t know what I hated most about this film: the trumped-up controversy of teenage pregnancy, the witless portmanteau’s, the aspiring cliches, or the fact that it tried to ram quirk down my throat at every turn. We get it, you’re different and can be a little wacky at times, no one gives a shit.

I gave this film one star (because there’s no way to give it zero) but to properly illustrate how much I hated this film understand that I was tempted to pay for the DVD I rented just so I could destroy it in order to reduce the copies of this film in existence.

It was cute. It was funny. I like it. I would see it again.

However…

Juno is a great example of a film that tries to pass itself off as an original indie film when in reality, there’s nothing “original” or “indie” about it. It’s fairly overrated and the default independent Academy Award Best Picture nominee. But to nominate Ellen Page for Best Actress is a big stretch. Especially when she’s up against Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose. Thank god I hate the Academy Awards.

It’s the run-of-the-mill, coming-of-age story about a quick-witted girl (Ellen Page), who lets her hormones get the best of her and gets pregnant by a cute guy from school (Michael Cera) and thus ensues the emotional rollercoaster with a little bit of humor sprinkled in between.

I saw this movie before. It was called Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine, blah blah blah. Some star value from Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner don’t really add to it. In fact, they probably take away.

The screenplay, direction, and plot were hardly original and the only redeeming qualities were the light-hearted humor at points, the cute story, and the great soundtrack.

If i could use one word to describe this film to me heartwarming at first it looks to be a off center independent film.which it is and also well written terrifically Acted and has the best soundtrack of the year. (I know because i bought it immediatey after even though i already have half the songs)

The characters start off as cliche then they seem to morph into real characters. who challenge what you initally thought of them. who stay with you and who you wish you knew or had in your life in reality. the only thing that felt false a little was the wisecracking store clerk. but in this movies world it still worked.

There has been some backlash about the dialogue and it’s coded like dialect but doesn’t eery new youth grup seem to popularize there own slang.

I feel this moie is more of a pure indie experience even though it has a universal story and characters and mainstream appeal it has it’s own sense of stlye and independece that makes young girls who see this find a role model and a new generation of boys find a girl type to have crushes on sure it has some places where the character can be annoying or spoiled but that is how some teenagers are.

Ellen page continues with her amazing sense of good scripts and equal performances. If you haven’t seen hard candy check it out now. she is excellent in the title role a role model for a new generation of girls. olivia thirlby is just so cute and pitch perfect in her role as the best friend. this film effected me i didn’t think much at first other then it was pretty goood movie but the more i thought about the film it kind of haunted me and made me realize how much it had gotten to me i guess i just had a delayed reaction.

Now i can see why some critics have criticized the film for it’s language and stylized dialogue. I don’t care at first it is annoying but once you get used to it and it finds it’s groove it doesn’t come off as pretentious as it does taken out of context. Neither does the film. Like i said before the more you get involved in the film and it goes along you see for all the fuss it tries to be cool and a outsider. In it’s heart it is heartwarming and old fashioned just like the main character.

Diablo cody is one to keep your eye on i have praised her before and i am praising her again. She also has a regular column in entertainment weekly magazine that just began. she is one to watch and i suspect she infused some of herself into this character. she seems to be the odd pop culture obsessed outcast. she is a female geek add her and tina fey together and you get two women who should control hollywood

I just can’t say enough about this film.

I really do not like this film for a number of reasons. It’s as though Diablo Cody created a world in which all of the characters speak rather brilliantly, except none of it is the type of language that I understand as human speech.

The best comparison to make would be Wes Anderson. No one talks in “real life” as a character speaks in a Wes Anderson film, but their words tell you about them as people. And you believe that, in spite of their unrealistic dialogue, that they are actual humans who just cannot properly articulate themselves.

"Juno"’s biggest flaw is that the filmmakers are blissfully unaware that the audience sees through the falseness of the dialogue. If they were aware of it, and made it a style, it could be very interesting. But as it stands its as though Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody are walking around blindfolded, knocking over expensive vases, and claiming that they are working on an art project in which they need broken expensive vase pieces.

I loved Diablo Cody’s use of language, but I guess I don’t read enough blogs. Anyways, the people and places seemed familiar to me. They drive minivans, I’ve seen neighborhoods like the ones they live in, they don’t dress in designer clothes, families relate to each other in this way, they enjoy talking about music and movies, conversation isn’t scripted, it’s full of awkwardness and strange references and hurtful things that mainstream movies try to gloss over. Like Knocked Up it is very funny but with plenty of pathos hidden behind the laughter.

unlike most people, I didn’t like Juno the first time I saw it. I thought it tried too hard to be catchy, too hard to be “indie,” and too hard to be unique. But the more I watched it, the more I started to like the unusual and overdone quirkiness of the characters and I especially liked it more when I came to film school and actually met people who were like the characters in the movie. I’ve come to realize that Diablo Cody wasn’t just trying to make a movie that’s just too damn cool but was trying to introduce the world to these people who have nothing better to do than be with each other, create banter & quips and catch up on their pop culture references. It’s like a movie about the Quentin Tarantino’s of the world. It’s adorable.

The direction is competent. The acting is all right. (I give Michael Cera and Jason Bateman a pass for “Arrested Development.”)

But ultimately, it comes right down to the script. The Oscar-winning script. Ladies and gentlemen, we gave an Oscar to “Honest to blog?”. We gave an Oscar to the most disgusting dialogues about film and music; to a plot that had a tenuous connection to reality; to a pile of quirkiness haphazardly assembled into a movie. I cannot think of another film in recent memory that angered me with every totally hip line falling out of the actors’ mouths.

It might just be personal preference, but God, what an awful movie. And for some reason, Diablo Cody was the one who received the most praise. Christ.

This film was directed by Jason Reitman and is about a sixteen-year-old girl and her decisions following an unplanned pregnancy.
The first scene frankly tells us that poor sixteen-year-old Juno is pregnant after she tells the viewers the story of how she had sex with her friend Paulie (Michael Cera) from their rock band. The rest of the film deals with Juno’s decision to eventually have her child and to give it up for adoption to a competent couple that she meets and the bumps that happen to her along the way.
Overall, I thought that the movie was good. The acting by Ellen Page is quite brilliant. She brings a very realistic feel to the film and carries every scene effortlessly it seems. The film also has an exceptional soundtrack to it. The film is very moving because it feels like such a real situation with the cynical attitude of Juno and the sense of confusion shown with every thought spoken by Paulie. I would say that Juno may have some of the finest acting of 2007 and that you should go see it if you have the time.

It’s a good feeling when you can walk out of your very first Toronto Film Festival showing thinking, “Wow, that was great.” The screening was for Juno, the sophomore effort from director Jason Reitman. Let’s just say that the proverbial slump is nowhere to be seen. I enjoyed Thank You For Smoking immensely, however, the ending couldn’t hold the tone he had set up from the start. With Juno, I kept waiting for the same pitfall, but thankfully it never showed face. As Reitman said in the post-show Q&A, when reading debut writer Diablo Cody’s work, he too was anticipating the train to derail and couldn’t believe it stayed solid through to the end. For a script that took her only two months to write, after a producer happening across her blog emailed her his compliments, she hit this one out of the park.

The story is about a girl who just finds out she is pregnant by her best friend Paul Bleeker, played by the wonderful Ellen Page and Michael Cera respectively. Trying to come to grips with the situation, and dealing with issues “way beyond her maturity level,” Page decides to give the child up to a family that will love him or her. On the journey that follows, some quirky relationships manifest between Juno and her baby’s father, her own father and stepmother, and the family she is giving the baby to. Throughout it all is a strong display of comedy gold. As the screenwriter Cody said, while she was never pregnant, the relationships are surely autobiographical. She experienced life as a sixteen-year-old, and by adding the dynamic of childrearing, was able to hypothesize the antics that could ensue.

While the subject matter is serious stuff, Reitman allows the screenplay to circumvent the weight with a big dose of levity. If nothing else, you will leave the film remembering some top-notch one-liners as Cody has a knack for sarcasm and witty retorts. The abundance of laughs helps get us through the heavier moments and never shortchanges or patronizes the situation at hand. All the credit here goes to Page for a powerhouse performance. She is coming into her own as a woman to look for in Hollywood. Her attitude is infectious while being slightly rude as far as social standards go. The character is fully believable as one who understands what is happening yet tries to play it off by disguising it with humor.

That humor succeeds even more by support from the rest of the stellar cast. J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney have spot-on timing with their cynical yet loving affections for their daughter Juno. Everything Simmons says is classic and when Janney gets room to roam free; she delivers some of the biggest laughs. Michael Cera is hysterical as always with his innocent looks of naïveté and natural screen persona. Reitman did admit that he ad-libbed a few lines, and to enhance a script like this one at his age by going with the flow shows the talent he possesses. I just hope he breaks out of the mold a little bit more and soon, as he has played the same role in the last three enterprises I have seen him in. And, what better way to begin the film than with a spot-on cameo from an uncredited Rainn Wilson that brings the laughter strong straight away.

As far as the heart to the story, it really is the relationship between Juno and the couple she is letting adopt her child played by Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner. Their interactions are the core of the film. Each experience sets a new learning curve for the young girl and it is the evolution between the three that creates the film’s payoff. Garner may be a tad overbearing in her presentation, however, if she toned it down, it might not have been as effective.

Overall, this is the kind of small film that proves how good art can bring great people together. The rapport between Reitman, Page, and Cody post-viewing was very light and cheery as though they were longtime friends. It appears everyone involved had a blast and believed in the message they set out to show. Never moralizing or shoving an agenda down our throats, this comedy is here to entertain. The laughs are big to the point where you may miss the next line, but that’s ok as its one I’d revisit anytime.

Me encantó este film.

Un embarazo no deseado pero nada menos que en JUNO, una niña de 16 años, apática, ácida y de habla rápida, contemplando sus decisiones, dudas, firmeza en otras, la mirada de los demás, cercanos, pares en la secundaria, el proceso de adopción y otro niño que, al igual que ella no es más que un niño y padre a la vez, éstas y muchas son temáticas e imágenes que quedan impresas en este bellisimo film de tiñe independiente.

La labor de ELLEN PAGE es lo que más resalta por la firmeza en que desempeña su personaje, nada fácil. Ya habíamos visto una actuación filosa de ella en HARD CANDY y prometía, aquí cumplió.

Lo bueno del film es que no cae en todas las instancias de un embarazo como foco principal sino en todo su alrededor y las situaciones que uno de antemano vé de resolución simple terminan siendo todo lo contrario.
Secundarios aportan esa falta de madurez en el personaje principal, otro acierto.

El film me compró por su emotividad, evidentemente generado JUNO.

9/10

I’m with Halim down there one hundred percent. The only thing I’ll add is that the music was cool, the acting was great, the screenplay was NOT self indulgent (wtf?) and that while he sucked at making Thank You For Smoking, Reitman is not completely incompetent (just a little).

It’s a good movie, c’mon. I’d rather kids be seeing Juno instead of the same retarded shit they play on the Disney Channel nowadays.

What’s it gonna be, Diablo Cody’s funny screenplay about relevant issues or The Gameplan?

Now I’m kinda of biased in my opinions about movies with Ellen Page. She is the cheese to my macaroni. Still, walking into Juno i knew that i was going to love it. I knew that it was deserving of all kinds of awards with all the clips and interviews I’d watched. Leaving Juno I didn’t just walk out knowing I’d witnessed something brilliant. I walked out knowing that I’d just witness what is now one of my favorite films, ever. Its almost impossible for me to even begin to explain my affection for this little gem. Juno more then lives up to the hype its receiving.

I knew when i watched Hard Candy back in 2006 that Ellen Page, a 20 year old Canadian from Nova Scotia would be our saving grace. Her presence on screen and talent spreads for miles. This year she once again proves that she is a force to be reckon with playing the lead role in Juno. One that will win her an Oscar nomination, possibly a win. From the first second she is on screen you immediately fall in love with her character. Juno is a witty, sarcastic 16 year old girl who clearly isn’t as smart as she thinks she is when she ends up facing an unplanned pregnancy with her best friend Paulie Bleeker played by Superbad’s Micheal Cera. Instead of taking the root of an Abortion, Juno looks in the Penny Saver with the help of her hot friend Leah for a wholesome, spiritual wealthy couple who have found true love with each other. All that’s missing is her bastard. This couple happens to be the Loring couple played by Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman.

This is Jason Reitmans follow up to one of 2006’s greatest surprises, Thank You For Smoking. A politically incorrect satire that was also one of the funniest films of that year. Juno is just as funny if not funnier and just as witty as his previous effort but is even more full of life and warmness.Theres is not one unlikeable thing about the movie. He directs the film perfectly and should be awarded with a nomination by the Academy next year.

Each actors gets their chance to shine in this. As much as Ellen Page is the main star and is the main reason to watch this, some of the best lines in the film are performed by Allison Janney, J.K. Simmons and Olivia Thirlby. Each character is so warm and likable and just adds even more to it. It isn’t often a film comes along with such strong and original dialog that has such biting satire and humor to it. Especially when it’s written by a first time screenwriter named Diable Cody. A former stripper/blogger. I think we can all agree though that there hasn’t been a better and more honest performance this year then Ellen Pages. They say that comedy is harder to do then drama. Well just give Ellen the Oscar then because i doubt any one else could have pulled off something this special.

Threw out the film we follow Juno’s nine month trip down pregnancy lane which she treats as an inconvenience. We see her mature and grow up before our eyes, building a strong relationship between her and Paulie and the couple who are adopting her unborn child. It’s clear that she is scared about the whole thing but refuses to let it show.

The films is virtually flawless in every way. No scene is out of place, no line isn’t necessary, each actor brings their best to the table which all around makes this film flow with perfection

I thought it was great for a change, to see a witty, sharp and strong female teenage character. I didn’t thought the movie was the most philosophical statement ever made, though it was really entertaining and also stylish at the same time. Through, the colors, costumes, set designs and the GREAT Indie soundtrack the director definitly creates a unique world of its own. And, Compared to a lot of the mindless teenage movies that are ONLY about sex,sex, and well sex, such as the American Pie Movies, it was also refreshing to see a movie dealing with issues that are not usually dealt with in coming-of-age comedies, such as abortion and teenage pregnancy…