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And now, as they say, time for something completely different.

Juno (2008) - 3/10

At it’s heart, Juno is a teen pregnancy movie without teenagers and without pregnancy. We start off with Juno, our eponymous heroine, finding that she is pregnant, in between completely obvious ad-related namedrops for “Sunny D”. She has a witty exchange with the guy at the pharmacy and then affirms her pregnancy in the toilet cubicle. At a stroke, this opening scene destroys any and all sense of reality which the Coming-of-Age genre thrives on. Teen pregnancy scares do not involve witty dialogue, they do not involve un-fazed hip teenagers; anyone who has been through a pregnancy scare will tell you it involves denial, hysterics and an early grave for every hope and dream you may have had.

To fully understand Juno, you have to understand the market which it is targetted at, after which the movie becomes slightly understandable, if not another disparate attempt to cash in on the “indie” tag. I’d imagine the Juno target audience to be: Suburban, white, 16-24 year olds from Middle America. You know, the people that think that because they read Kerouac, listen to Shellac and understand the meaning of “vegan”, they are somehow superior to everyone around them. This market is a fucking goldmine, and I have no problem whatsoever with Fox Searchlight ripping those suckers off, if only they wouldn’t foist it on the rest of us. The reason this target market is an advertisers dream is that they honestly believe their own hype. They honestly think that because they work in a record shop, they are somehow better off than the person working down the road at Starbucks. Chumps like that are hard to come by, and boy, does this film cash in on them in spades.

I would imagine that a large section of the people who actively buy Juno on DVD will probably do so in order to pick out the obscene amount of (blatently obvious) pop culture references in this film. Unlike films like High Fidelity where such references form an integral part of the film, here they are scattered over the top like little chocolate pieces on icecream. At best, it gives a slight diversion from the absence of plot, emotion and filmcraft, at worst, it offers up skin crawlingly cringeworthy exchanges over different guitar brands. I know many guitarists, they don’t talk brands, they talk details. I am sure that a conversation about EMG pickups would go clean over the head of most non-guitarists, but at least it would be more realistic than “I always preferred Jackson to Fender”.

Divergences aside, let’s turn to my main gripe with this movie. The hyper intelligent, witty 16 year old Juno. Juno is crafted to be everything that the target market dreams of being. She has been in a band by the age of 16, she likes The Stooges, she is super hot, but totally self aware and in control at all times. Pregnancy hits Juno’s world like… Well, it doesn’t actually. Juno may be physically pregnant for the entire movie, but in terms of script and emotion, the only time she really acknowledges the fact is when she squeezes the damn thing out. How does she manage this? Well, first she attempts abortion, which may be a complete non-event for some people, but I’m sure even for the most hard hearted multiple returner, it’s something that wouldn’t be abandoned because “that place smelt like a dentists”. So she decides to give the kid up for adoption. Bang. There goes any and all connection with the child. It’s the plot equivalent of “Hey Superman, don’t you remember you’re immune to that?”

The adoptive parents underline the second major fault in the film, that there are no adult characters. This feeds into the target market yet again. What do all the bored hip kids in Yokelsville, Oklahoma think they are? More intelligent than everyone, including their parents. So this film underlines it, then re-underlines it, then highlights Juno in a halo of witty dialogue just to get the point across. The adoptive mother, despite the fact she has a job, is pitched as ‘The Willing Housemaker’ (public enemy number one to girls bred on Ghost World); the father is ‘The Cool Guy’ who is held back by his wife and just wants to rock out, man. To the film’s credit, I gave it a few points just for pointing out that the wife is actually okay and the husband is a dickhead. In fact, I hope that some of the washed up 30 something detritus of the mid 90s take a long hard look at the husband and realise that they’re not 19 anymore, hanging around with people half their age sucks and maybe it is time to grow beyond the boundaries of any given young character in Empire Records.

Against the background of kids for adults, Juno’s suprisingly adult dialogue stands out like a sore thumb. Think of yourself when you were sixteen, you were smarter than everyone else, but remember when you hit eighteen and realised that two years ago all you were was a self important gobshite? Remember when you hit your twenties and realised you weren’t all that old when you were eighteen? Well, ignore all that, because according to this film, it doesn’t happen. What happens in The Target Market’s dreams is that they, as the epicentre of known existence, wander through the lives of other hopelessly unhip and washed up souls, shedding the light from their reflected knowledge and glory on all and sundry. To a more or lesser extent, this is what happens with Juno. Everyone else in the film is there to set her up for a witty retort or monologue. Every situation is there just to prove that she’s hip and in control. As a girl from Smalltown America destined to be a rockstar, write poetry, listen to obscure music and look effortlessly cool (in a totally individual way); things like real life would just get in her way, so they’re scripted out entirely. Everything happens the way she wants it, if things go wrong, two scenes later she snaps her fingers and they’re right again. There is no challenge here, we get told of all this grief and strife she is having to endure, but from a storyboard level, she is as happy as larry and floats through the movie accordingly. No wonder teen pregnancy levels are so high if it this bloody easy to endure.

Lack of three dimensional characters, a plot and any semblance of realistic dialogue, this film careens from one scene to the next rather like The Mary Celeste. It does so in a pretty way though. In fact the wrapping on the film is perfect. Like all such films, it is exquisitely made and completely soul-less. What does drag after the first, lets be generous here, ten seconds, is the absolutely abysmal soundtrack. Twee, lofi, acoustic, indie, I, could, keep, categorising, it, but, it’s, driven, me, insane, already. You know the type, it’s like four bars of The Moldy Peaches over and over again ad infinatum. Oh wait, the chick from the Moldy Peaches did the soundtrack, that figures. It keeps dragging across your spinal column until the final shot where the characters play a Moldy Peaches cover at which point I honestly wanted to hit whoever signed that contract. Seriously, parents of America, this music is evil. I’m not going to say it’s the work of the Devil, because frankly, his jukebox kicks arse, but nevertheless, it is sick and wrong. Bring back corporal punishment, play them Hendrix in their sleep, pump them full of Ritalin, just get them off that shit as fast as possible. They’ll thank you for it later when they’re twentysomething and don’t have a record collection that sucks balls.

In parting, this film got a three because of the slightly above average cinematography, some good supporting acting (like Juno’s amor, who, despite being a leading role, feels completely auxilliary, and therefore I cannot be bothered to describe him in depth). Everything else about this film is complete tripe. If this is the “indie film of the year” then give me a bucket of popcorn and Spiderman 7, because this shit sucks.