Film Clips
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Juno
by M. Faust
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In the interest of providing you with consumer news you can use, I am compelled to point out that just about everyone seems to love Juno. MetaCritic.com, which compiles reviews from noted critics, ranks it above every current movie playing locally except No Country for Old Men, The Savages and Sweeney Todd. The readers of imdb.com give it an 8.5 out of 10, enough to rank on the site’s all-time top 200. So if you’re interested in seeing this comedy about a precocious teenager who gets pregnant and decides to find a suitable pair of adoptive parents, don’t let me talk you out of it. But if you’re interested in my opinion, I wanted to run screaming from the theater for most of its 92 minutes. I smelled trouble the moment I read the writing credit for “Diablo Cody,” a name that just bellows “Pay attention to me!” and that is exactly the voice I heard all through this movie. Imagine if Quentin Tarantino’s formative years had been spent watching John Hughes movies, and you’ll get the idea. Fans like to call it a female version of Knocked Up or Superbad, which I won’t argue other than to point out that it has far more of the faults of those films than the virtues. I understand that young people pepper their speech with ostentatious references both to show off their cleverness and to hide their poor self-esteem. But what I heard too much of in Juno was not an attempt to reveal this kind of character as to show off the likes and dislikes of the writer. (By the way, it’s Thunderbirds are Go, not Thundercats are Go.) Equally painful was a score composed of colorlessly sing-song tunes largely by Kimya Dawson. I didn’t believe any of these characters were real people, and for the most part I didn’t like any of them. But hey, that’s just my opinion.
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