Oh, Juno
I won’t quoth the Weiss on the merits of the soundtrack — even though that’s what the below is really a lead-in to — because I have someone whom I love that loves the song Cera and Page sing together at the film’s close. Instead, I’ll just quote the most succint description of how I felt watching the dialogue in this movie:
It doesn’t feel like Cody envisions Juno being complex so much as perfect, and you’re put face-to-face with it almost immediately.
In a gut-wrenching scene during the movie’s first ten minutes, Ellen Page’s titular character runs into Rainn Wilson’s convenience store looking for a pregnancy test and the following dialogue takes place:
Wilson: “Your eggo is preggo, no doubt about it!”
Page: “Silencio! I just drank my weight in Sunny D, and I have to go, pronto!”
Cute and all until you realize that you’re being asked to make an emotional investment in a movie where these are the kind of things a 16-year old and a convenience store clerk are capable of saying to each other. It’s a tribute to the skilled professionals in the cast that Juno isn’t half bad despite having some of the most stilted and unrealistic script writing you’ll likely ever hear (see: “swear to blog!”).
This is one of the things that struck almost immediately watching the film. Not that Juno wasn’t good — it was OK, with a few genuinely hilarious, honest moments. But any 50-year-old critic that praised the “rapid-fire”, “tight-rope” dialogue is merely exociticizing some hipster dialect that just plainly doesn’t exist. Look how detached they are! Genius!
And no: not a Best Picture candidate. Cute little movie, but in a year that gave us “Call it, friendo.” and “I drink your milkshake!”, well, no. Just no.
