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J-Man checks out Jason Reitman's fantastic JUNO!!!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I saw this film a couple days ago myself and am in the process of writing it up. I will say that I loved it and it's just as good as (maybe even better than) Jason Reitman's debut THANK YOU FOR SMOKING. I'll give you more of my opinion soon, but one of our spies, known as J-Man, caught the film and he's below to share his opinion with you. Enjoy!
Hi Harry,
J-Man, here. Been a long while since I sent anything, but I felt the need to chime in about Jason Reitman's latest. Or, should I call it Ellen Page's new movie? Because, frankly, she owns this thing.
Sure, "Juno" is funny (damn near every single line of dialogue is written to elicit laughter), directed with as just as sure a hand as "Thank You For Smoking".. possibly surer.. and acted gamely by the whole cast -- especially Olvia Thirlby and J.K. Simmons as the title character's galpal and understanding dad. The script, by Diablo Cody, is rich with one-liners; anyone who's read Candy Girl (which is unbelievably smart and funny; espcially her description of Shania Twain) will kind of know what to expect.
But, this is without a doubt Page's show. She's in almost every scene, and I couldn't spot an instance when she made a bad decision or timed anything but dead-on. During a funky, kick ass opening title sequence, Juno is on her way to the pharmacy. "I just drank my weight in Sunny D, and gotta go, pronto!" It's time for another pregnancy test, because the last result looked more like a division symbol than a plus sign. New stick: still plus.
The father's a guy Juno had sex with once upon a time, who also happens to be her best friend, Paulie Bleeker (a non-affected, quite bland Michael Cera). She decides to give it up for adoption, being 16 and all, which Paulie supports -- as do Juno's father and step-mom -- and the rest of the film is about her selection of adoptive parents.
This is pretty straightforward storytelling, but with an ear for quirky, hip dialogue. If the spoken words were any more "cool", or the actors speaking them did so with any less suave, my gag reflex might have taken over. The audience I saw it with, Sunday, couldn't get enough from the second Juno tells a dog to shut up, through lines comparing babies to iPods and Alison Janney going off on a physician.
There's good stuff, here. And even though it never really swept me off my feet, the film is consistently humorous and, in one scene near the end, pretty damn heartbreaking.
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blaa
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Will check this one out.
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There was frost on my windshield this morning. Not the first time this autumn, either.
Oh, yeah, this film is getting very good buzz, but I am wary of the "trying hard to be way hip" vibe I got from this review. I hope its genuinely good and not gag-worthy, as the reviewer suggests it strays close to. -
Apparently, he's seen the trailer. Which, as everyone knows, is all you need to pass judgment on a movie.
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Did you ever see Arrested Development? Or Superbad? That's his schtick. It's called deadpan. And it's genius. Pure genius, I say.
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I also caught this at the AFF last Sunday, and I find it hard to believe anyone will truly dislike this movie. The smarmy cynicism of Thank You For Smoking (which worked for that story) doesn't take front and center in this film, which somehow maintains a balance of comedy and drama that prevents any of the characters from becoming pure caricature. The only fault I can really find in Juno is that so many of the characters, young and old, speak with the same crackling smart-ass wit, but it's easily forgiven because the lines work for the most part.
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I saw AnimalStructure's comments over in the other thread. Yeah, he's a very particular type of asshole.
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but he says he is in the industry. Even though I don't think I have ever seen him give proof of it.
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the preview looked like I might enjoy Juno. I'm curious to hear if critics think that the style of humor is different enough from Thank You that I could enjoy it. It's not that I didn't "get" the Thank You humor; I just found it too smug and on-the-nose for my taste, too middle-of-the-road between broad, deliberately caustic/biting humor and the subtle Alexander Payne style; it needed to swing one way or the other for me to find it effective. That and I'm probably too adamant that smoking's just plain bad, so I didn't care to see the political ambiguity the film suggested. But Juno has a great cast so I might be down.
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Oct 16, 2007 3:04:36 PM CDT
j-man? that wouldn't be short for "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmi
by honestune
because his name is my name too.
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I have to hand it to you, you're nothing if not consistent. You're also annoying and stupid. But those weren't part of the pool.
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