Little Miss Sunshine's Wannabe Cousin: Juno

          “A fresh, quirky, unusually intelligent comedy about a 16-year-old girl who wins our hearts in the first scene.” Says Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times. False. “A movie already reputed to be hipper than tomorrow night.” Raves Newsday’s John Anderson. More Lies. Right off the bat I’m going to say that Juno is a good movie; it is worth the ticket stub price and perhaps even a DVD purchase if you missed it in theatres, but while Juno is a decent movie, it is not a lot of other things. Juno is not a) the best movie of the year. b) even close. c) hilarious or hip. I’m sorry sports fans, but Juno is not the second coming of Jesus Christ (If you’re into that kind of thing). While I fully support the viewing and enjoyment of this movie, there are a lot of things to think about before dubbing it the greatest screenplay of all time and even seeing it.          The story of Juno is told from the point of view of a young girl, named Juno, played by the budding Ellen Page. The general plot is pretty straight-forward, Juno gets impregnated by Superbad’s Michael Cera, from there the movie follows her pregnancy as she attempts to give away her baby, deal with her relationship problems and still live a normal life. The parts for the puzzle were there, but director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo cody are those kids who have to have those two pieces go together that obviously don’t fit. Juno had all the ingredients, but fell short of greatness, due to some glaring issues.
          First off Juno is not “hip”. Juno’s claim to fame is its bleeding edge lingo that will rock the “hizzouse”. This is in no way true. Any child, any adolescent will tell you that this movie is not “hip”. Partly because of the fact that no one says hip anymore, but mostly because Juno tries too hard. Juno desperately wants to be indie. Juno is the rich kid who really, really, really wants to live in the hood. Sorry, it’s just how the cookie crumbled. Not only is Roger Ebert’s quote wrong about the first scene, but it is in fact the exact opposite. Lines in the first fifteen minutes physically made me cringe. Such timeless phrases as, “Honest to blog” should be banned from existence. It is a scar on the teenage demographic. In what twisted universe does someone say that, and what has the world done wrong to convince the middle aged men who are Hollywood’s critics to believe that such phrases are the epitome of “cool” let alone said in real life.          Developing a character with quirks and flaws is one thing, but being alternative for the sake of being obscure and indie is another. Sometimes it feels as if the writers are bragging. Ok buddy, I get that you listen to weird music, but see the thing is, I don’t, therefore I’m not getting much out of this ten minute rant about Sonic Youth’s early works.
          Since hearing someone tell me this I can’t stop seeing Juno through this lens. Juno the movie, the script and its whole being is very self-aware. It knows it’s being too cool for school and different. Which makes it pale in comparison to truly genuine movies like “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Napoleon Dynamite”.
           After ripping apart the movie like that, I can’t trust that you, the reader, will take my endorsement, but in the end Juno will win you over. The hype isn’t for nothing, the movie really starts to flow well by the second or third act, as the humor and the emotions find its way, but between excluding Juno’s dry humor king of a boyfriend from most of the movie and creating this forced hip environment, Juno fails to evoke the same sense humanity and authenticity that other great films can boast. Once you watch it I know you’ll like it, but c’mon, it’s not that good.