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2007 THE NOMINEES |
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A Pregnant Teen-ager?
of TheColumnists.com
There are lots of things to like about "Juno," a happy little film that has burgeoned into a box office wonder as one of the major "feel good" pictures of the year--one that seems to please both youngsters and their parents.
The premise of "Juno" is simple: Juno is a teenage girl who has unprotected sex with her boy friend and turns up pregnant. She doesn't want to ruin her life by marrying an immature boy and becoming one of those awful high school moms, lugging around a squawling infant when she should be doing her homework and hanging out at the local pizza palace. But she doesn't want an abortion either because, well, it doesn't seem right.
So Juno decides to have her baby and then give it up for adoption and go on with her life. With the blessing of her parents, she advertises for a couple wanting a child, but does it carefully because she wants to make sure they're going to be ideal parents.
She seems to strike pay dirt when she discovers a working couple (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) who really like her and are devoted to the idea of raising Juno's baby the right way. Then complications ensue and the movie seems a lot less carefree.
Though I think "Juno" is cleverly written and director Jason Reitman gets the very best results from his mostly TV-oriented cast, I had trouble getting into the right mind set to find comedy in this pretty sad situation. Maybe that's because I was raised in the era of films like the 1959 "Blue Denim," in which a similar young couple (Carol Lynley, Brandon de Wilde) faced the pregnancy dilemma and treated it like a major tragedy, which it often was in the real life of those days, at least from my own observations of kids who got into the same mess.
"Juno" takes a well-thought-out approach to resolving the problem. Juno's parents (Allison Janney from "The West Wing" and J.K. Simmons from "The Closer") don't blow their tops over her bad news and generally offer her good advice. There's enough reality to maybe make teens think twice about doing it without protection, but I think maybe it seems such an easygoing voyage for Juno that kids will think, "Hey, that's no big deal."
I just couldn't laugh that much--and it's a comedy, which means it missed the mark with me most of the time.
There's one major compensation, though: Ellen Page, who plays Juno, is a delightfully talented young lady who ought to go far in movies. She's in the running for Best Actress and even if she doesn't win an Oscar, that salute to her from her show business colleagues will last her the rest of her life.
©2008 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Feb. 18, 1976.
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