Juno
One word review: Phew. ‘cos I really feared hating this about as much as I did Waitress, Knocked Up, and just about any given “oh shit I’m pregnant” ‘comedy’ this side of Junebug. It’s something of a miracle that this won me over. In light of Junebug – seriously, am I the only person on the planet who remembers that movie? – the title here kinda pissed me off to start with, and Ellen Page’s character is even referred to as “Junebug” at various points – since starting this review I discovered this blog entry by the screenwriter which both illuminates that line of thinking and much to my chagrin makes me kinda love the movie even more. All that, and I have an inexplicable aversion to Ellen Page in general – something of a combo of her creepy similarity to Christina Ricci, the unanimous adulation of her in the critical world, and about a million other things.
But by midway, like I said, this pretty much had me won me over. I got over the almost insulting quirkiness of it all – the music (I mean how could I complain anymore when “Piazza New York Catcher” and more by Belle and Sebastian kicks in?), the stupid pipe, the hamburger phone, just the overall feel of it is so Napoleon Dynamite it again makes me wonder if every other movie fan on the planet has just a 2 year memory. Jennifer Garner kinda scared me when she popped up as the adoptive mother but she turns out to be perfect. Likewise Jason Bateman as her husband – after all my whining about the gender thing recently, I found to my surprise that this one does all the wrong things regarding the gender line but somehow makes it work. He does the “typical guy thing”, Garner even tells Page, “he’s just being a guy”, and I should be screaming at this point – but because it comes so believably from the character rather than the author or any collective consciousness lie … it works. As with Junebug, the characters here are all painfully believable, you can latch onto any one of them at any given time. Allison Janney in particular moved me as the pregnant teen’s mother – her little speech to the ultrasound technician is just beautiful.
Like so many movies of the past year, I can’t wait to watch this movie again now knowing that it’s not what I originally expected and feared (it does do the screamy “omg did you know giving birth hurts??” scene, though grr). The best I can say of it, ultimately, is that it won me over, that I can’t wait to see it again, and, like Atonement, I won’t be too bummed by any awards nominations that come its way.