{"id":573,"date":"2008-05-22T14:06:46","date_gmt":"2008-05-22T21:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=573"},"modified":"2008-05-22T14:06:46","modified_gmt":"2008-05-22T21:06:46","slug":"movie-review-juno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2008\/05\/22\/movie-review-juno\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Review — Juno"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the tradition of movie reviews by busy parents who never get to see adult movies until they come out on DVD, here are some thoughts on Juno<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed this film for its quirky characters and neo-indie-folk soundtrack.\u00a0 Ellen Page was brilliant in the title role.\u00a0 And you have to appreciate a contemporary film in which the choice to give birth rather than to abort is celebrated.<\/p>\n

But … the whole thing seemed rather contrived to me.\u00a0 Juno MacGuff is just a bit too smart, knowing and world weary to be credible as a sixteen-year-old.\u00a0\u00a0 She’s in control even when she’s not — from initiating sex with Paulie Bleeker, to the decision to give birth, to carrying out the adoption plan with Vanessa Loring after Mark Loring backs out.\u00a0 Yes, she faces the consequences of her sexual relationship with Paulie by giving birth, but only up to a point.\u00a0 There’s no sense at all of emotional loss or mourning over her innocence, her youth, or the child that she bears and gives away to someone else.\u00a0 I don’t buy it.<\/p>\n

We’re supposed to feel that Juno is heroic, that by her wit she\u00a0deconstructs the artifices of her world and rebuilds it as something authentic and pure.\u00a0 But\u00a0there’s a sort of emotional distantiation in Juno’s character that is deeply unnerving.\u00a0 Paulie cuddles her tenderly after she gives birth, they remain together, and the film closes on them playing one of those great off-beat folk songs together on acoustic guitars — but will the song go on?\u00a0 Does Juno possess the depth of character required to stick it out in a relationship when things go wrong and she isn’t fully in control?\u00a0 Or will she disconnect from Paulie some day as easily as she gave away her baby to\u00a0Vanessa?\u00a0 In short, can Juno really love<\/em>, or does she just want to be loved<\/em>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the tradition of movie reviews by busy parents who never get to see adult movies until they come out on DVD, here are some thoughts on Juno. I enjoyed this film for its quirky characters and neo-indie-folk soundtrack.\u00a0 Ellen Page was brilliant in the title role.\u00a0 And you have to appreciate a contemporary film […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-9f","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}