I saw Juno on Friday night, and I really enjoyed it. It was full of witty one liners, and fellow movie-goers and myself laughed our way through the film.
If you’ve had your head under a rock, the movie is the story about a 16 year old girl, Juno, who finds herself pregnant. She first makes herself an appointment to “procure a hasty abortion” but backs out once she arrives at the clinic. (The feminist in me is biting her tongue, sparing you the diatribe about so many female characters in TV/movies deciding to have their babies, mostly without even considering an abortion. It’s an angle that’s been covered by better writers than me.) Juno decides to give up her baby for adoption to a couple she finds in the Penny Saver.
There were two things that I liked most about the movie, aside from the fact that it’s freaking riotously funny. First, I really liked what they did with the character of the adoptive mother, played by Jennifer Garner. At the beginning of the film, you’re not really meant to like her. She’s that stereotype of the humorless, kill-joy woman such as in Knocked Up, a controlling, obsessive-compulsive, shrew-like yuppie who is utterly condescending towards her husband. But in the end, they turn that whole awful opinion you have on her on its ear. She ends up being a character that you really do care about, in the end, and a heroine.
The other thing that I really liked about the movie is how they didn’t have that didn’t portray Juno as a victim. She’s not a poor hapless teenager. She’s not in a ridiculous relationship that she’s trying to force to work. She’s got the “cheese to [her] macaroni”. Juno isn’t walking about moping about the baby within that she won’t be raising. She’s walking about moping about a boy, and she wants to get the band back together. She’s not solely defined by the fact that she accidentally got pregnant.
So go see it. You’ll laugh. J4 teared up when the baby was born. (aaawwwww)
