Are you sure that the pregnancy test isn't defective?
Imagine being 16 years old, having sex with a boy one time, and realizing two months later that there's a baby developing in your womb. This is the reality in the new film Juno, when Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page, X-Men: The Last Stand) experiences the task of carrying an unexpected baby, the protagonist discovering herself and her place in a broken world.
"It all started with a chair" is the opening line of the film, a love-comedy that takes two sexually active teenagers, throws them into an unexpected situation and watches the wheels come off.
Juno and Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera, Superbad) are good friends and band members who share an unspoken attraction. After their pre-planned sex leads to unplanned pregnancy, the conflict is set for the characters to develop and react to the problem at hand. Juno's attitude about the whole thing in the beginning of the movie is nonchalant, and her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby, Margaret) does nothing but joke about it, never taking it seriously.
As the whole film revolves around a young, high school teenager getting pregnant, the actual baby is the smallest part of the movie. What viewers are shown is a world full of broken families and immature young kids acting older than they psychologically are.
The humor sits somewhere between Napoleon Dynamite and Judd Apatow's (Knocked Up) cult television series Freaks and Geeks. The rampant use of teenage lingo makes the movie difficult to understand at times, but works in the context of the story, the high school world presented as something difficult to comprehend.
Even telling her father Mac MacGruff (J. K. Simmons, Thank You For Smoking) and her stepmother Bren (Allison Janney, Hairspray) that she's pregnant is accepted rather easily, accompanied with jokes right off the bat. It's not until Juno exits the frame that the brutally serious, parental side of the problem is shown.
Director Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking) incorporates the roles of adults and teenagers as a major theme in the film and succeeds in doing so. Page's Juno is a very mature kid who takes on a pregnancy and makes the most of it. Her parents take the blow and roll with it in a mature manner, lightening up a touchy situation.
The young girl eventually decides to give the baby up for adoption; she looks in the Pennysaver for willing parents to take care her child. She decides on a supposedly perfect couple, Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner, The Kingdom) and Mark Loring (Jason Bateman, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium). After meeting the couple, Juno builds a special connection with Mark.
Juno and Mark start spending time together and a passion starts to develop between them. Mark is an adult who will not grow up, still trapped in younger days. This attraction between Juno and Mark complicates the initially comfortable film, deepening the themes through this potentially controversial relationship.
The synopsis or general trailer may suggest that the film is just another quirky, indie film with a hip soundtrack, but those who take the chance will experience an original story that induces laughs and tears throughout while touching on an angle of adolescence that few filmmakers are bold enough to showcase.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
