Really, people.
Were there no better movies this year other than 3 about violent and/or corrupt white men and 2 involving teenage girls making questionable personal decisions?
I mean, I know that the Oscars are pretty absurd to begin with, and I rarely agree with their choices, but.. jeez. (And yes, I know those 3 about violent and/or corrupt white men are supposed to be stellar and remarkable and blah blah blah and I'm sure I'll end up seeing them at some point)
Sidenote: Juno wasn't all bad. No, it didn't deserve nearly the level of acclaim it's received, and yes, it was flip at all the wrong moments, but hey - Juno's got at least a bit of personality to her (unlike what's-her-name in Knocked Up), and in the latter half of the movie you see a few cracks in her hip facade. And her stepmom was great. Should the film have gotten deeper and more honestly involved in what it really would be like being preggo and huge in high school? Yeah. Should it have given more consideration and time to her abortion-or-not decision? Yeah.
Things the film got right:
The charged dynamic between Juno and the married but emotionally stunted Mark.
Giving Juno sexual agency and (mostly) not demonizing her for it.
Bleeker. Dude was adorable. Not particularly realistic, but adorable. You can't be a single girl who still remembers high school and not wish you'd had a Bleeker back in the day.
Still, I've gotta go with Katha Pollitt here:
Juno herself is a prickly, winsome, complex and original person: she wears work shirts, plays the guitar and has a luminous intelligence and a pixielike nonsexy beauty, and that is a way young girls are almost never portrayed in films. Still, and maybe this is why I remained dry-eyed, I couldn't get over my sense that, hard as the movie worked to be a story about particular individuals, not a sermon, it was basically saying that for a high school junior to go through pregnancy and childbirth to give a baby to an infertile couple is both noble and cool, of a piece with loving indie rock and scorning cheerleaders; it's fetal fingernails versus boysenberry condoms.
(Yes, I'm planning to see 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days if it gets out to Oregon)
UPDATE: my brother sent me a quote from a review of Juno that he found and it's SO TRUE: "Too much of it is like a subpar episode of Freaks and Geeks, padded out to 92 minutes with pseudo-witty dialogue." I mean, really. You want the best of the best of what it's really like to be in high school? Freaks and Geeks, man. Freaks and Geeks.