Review of Juno

It's been an interesting month for films (December that is). Not all that deep a month, for new releases - I've seen 6 new films, including the David Lynch documentary, and only one is really extraordinary - but even the less successful films have been very interesting. I've been sitting on a couple of these reviews for a while, and it might be time to get them posted, whether I have run out of things to say about them or not. With luck I might get a couple more of these out before the year (at least the week) is up... for now -

Juno - Every year, there seem to be two of three films like this. (Lately - say, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Little Miss Sunshine, maybe Half-Nelson, Knocked Up, Lars and the Real Girl (in a very minor sense) - a partial sampling.) They seem to come out of nowhere (a few months before they are released) - they play Sundance or Toronto or something and people gush. And the moving chattering classes (pro and am) start to shiver in anticipation. The hype builds - and then they arrive... And the reviews are - call it mixed. Call them normal, like this was just another film.* You'll see some good notices - some bad - and then you start to see a backlash: the haters come out. And the anti-haters come out. Maybe a think piece or two appears (like this one, after Katherin Heigl took some shots at Knocked Up [richly deserved shots, one has to say.]) And so - even if you see the film opening weekend, you have seen it go through about 5 stages of critical reaction. And what might have seemed like a sure thing 3 months before, and a disaster the week before, now - could be anything on the planet. So you go, and you hope for the best, or for something surprising and then -

Some of them work (I think Little Miss Sunshine is a pretty good movie, or 2/3 of a pretty good movie, despite all the hating) - but Juno, not so much. My main reaction is one of deflation. It's enjoyable enough, but even watching it, I felt it getting away. Hoping it could turn around but fearing the worst. And thinking about it for a couple weeks now, the disappointment has just grown more convincing. The problem is simple: I don't believe a word of it, from beginning to end. Juno herself comes off like a reasonably convincing human being - but I don't believe the story. And worse - the filmmakers never convinced me that they believed a word of it, and don't do a thing with the unbelievability of it. It's not a parable or fable or any of those things (like the infinitely better Waitress is.) The filmmakers are conventional mainstream Indie filmmakers, and can’t imagine anything outside conventional mainstream indie realism. Everything is contrived: they have no obstacles in the way of the kid having an abortion, so they have to make like the Phantom in Inland Empire, and hypnotize you - they chant some mumbo jumbo and she runs away. Then they set up the adoption family and again - contrive a story out of it. People defend these films where characters who should (and would) have abortions don't by saying things like "there's no story if she has an abortion” - no kidding, but here - there's no story if she doesn't have an abortion either. So they have to manufacture one: if the adoptive couple weren’t fuckups, you wouldn’t have any jokes, you wouldn’t have a plot - she’d go 9 months, have the kid, maybe get back together with the boy, end of story. Instead they gin up a plot - a plot that is obvious the minute Juno walks in their house, and gets drilled in all over again when she talks to the husband - and play it out by the numbers. They don't do a thing you can't see coming from the beginning. Now - if Vanessa got cold feet, or Juno got creeped out by Vanessa's stalkerish behavior in the mall - it would at least be interesting. But this is stupid, predictable, and as false as the non-abortion. And it's frustrating, because the performances are good, and a lot of the moment to moment writing and characterization is solid, and it does try to take the POV of the girl. The plot fakery stands out.

And so.... there's still plenty to like - it's funny most of the way through, quite a few of the characters are charming enough. There are complaints about Juno being too pop culture savvy, though I don't quite see it - nothing ever goes away anymore, with DVDs and the internet, so 16 year old Mott the Hoople fans should be no surprise. The problem with the pop culture name dropping is how transparent it is - they name check the Stooges and the Melvins and Patti Smith and Mott the Hoople like wearing buttons. And none of that musical taste is reflected in the film - the characters may claim to love the Stooges and the Melvins, but we hear the Moldy Peaches... I guess Ellen Page suggested using them, but I don't know if that excuses it; they make for bad soundtrack music, turning the mood "cute" every time they play, and using them (instead of the Melvins or Nirvana or the Stooges) underlines how music is used as a label to signify characterization. It isn't quite true that these characters should be defined by their musical tastes - this isn't High Fidelity. But their tastes, in this film, carry no weight: they are labels. The musical conversations are just name dropping - I can believe a 16 year old Iggy Pop fan; I can't believe a Melvins fan who doesn't love the Stooges.

I suppose I'm overstating this a bit. Or, having let this post cook for 2 weeks, I'm having second thoughts about my second thoughts... because I admit: this isn't necessarily unconvincing - that is how people talk about music - they compare tastes by naming names; they make rash and excessive judgments - "Sonic Youth is just noise!"; they try to surprise and impress the other person... I've been there, done that - conversations about music, especially with people younger or older than yourself, tend to look like those pokemon card games - "you've played your Stoogemon, but that's no match for my Blue Cheeronator!" That's especially believable in Juno herself - I can believe her tastes,** and how she uses them to try to impress the husband. Playing "All the Young Dudes" as though you didn't think he'd have heard it before.... So I must temper my abuse - though it still plays like shortcuts to character in the film, and the talk doesn't match what we hear on the soundtrack...

* I should add - this particular process seems most common with indie crowdpleasers. There might be plenty of hype for art films (There Will Be Blood, say) or blockbusters, but when they arrive, the reactions are different. Blockbusters sink or swim at the box office - the rest is pretty much irrelevant. And with art films, the arguments are much more substantive, moving away from the hype. This is perhaps because art films actually try to look like something - indie comedies all look alike. There's nothing to talk about except the story, so if the story doesn't shine...

** With the internet and DVDs and CDs and oldies radio and VH-1 classic documentaries and god knows what else, pretty much all pop culture for the last 100 years is out there to be found - I know too many 10, 12, 15 year old Beatles and Elvis and Ramones and Judas Priest and Feelies fans, too many Disney experts, anime nerds, Three Stooges fans, comics readers, to say otherwise - I could cite the two kids sitting in front of me at the Blade Runner show yesterday, discussing, in minute detail the entire frigging run of Star Trek, Pike to Voyager.