Juno (2007)

Juno. Film review. In the Western culture - from what i learnt from books and films - where it really doesn't that much of a thing when you're pregnant before any marriage, the main question aroused when you're sixteen and pregnant was how you'd going to raise the baby after it has been born. Totally unlike here when the first and only question asked when you're pregnant and not married was how to conceal the fact as long as possible. Probably, dug up a hole somewhere and buried yourself is often the feasible solution. So much for the cultural-difference.

Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) is a girl unlike any other. Had i known her in a real life, i would fall head over heels on her. How often have you met a girl, sixteen, played guitar in a band to a point where she could identified a Gibson Les Paul guitar from a distance, influenced by names such as Sid Vicious, and Patti Smith and casually mentioned Dario Argento and Suspiria while watching The Wizard of Gore? In my case, never. The film begins with a chair (as Juno herself said). She was sixteen, still a senior in a highschool, and she's pregnant. Had it happened here, of course, it would be the end of the world for her. But as i said, Juno is a girl unlike any other, in an environment where it's socially acceptable if you had sex before marriage as long as it's safe.

Juno has been everywhere. Decorating various critics' page as one of the best film in 2007, mentioned in almost every message boards, carrying baggage such as the 2007 equivalent of Little Miss Sunshine. In short, i've been hearing nothing but a good thing about this film. Unless for one. I've read, probably the first and only cautious review on this film at Cinematical. It said that Juno has received a quite dangerous status of a 'cool-film' that redefines 'cool'. That is, you're not cool if you haven't seen it. The article urges people to stop giving a false-publicity to the film as the film may not be able to sustain its own famous status.

I've seen the film, and i was disappointed.

I loved Juno as a character, but only as far as my adolescence goes which is doesn't goes that far. I think that my interest in this film was quickly deteroriates when Juno breaks up the news of her pregnancy to her parents and decides that she's going to give-up her baby for an adoption to a foster parent which she personally chooses (played by Jennifer Garner who better than her average, and Jason Bateman who merely come and goes) which happened fairly early in the film. After that scene, there was nothing more for me to the film but merely to finish what i had started.

It probably had something to do with Juno's choice in the matter of her pregnancy. I've seen two significant film about pregnancy in 2007. Knocked Up and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. At both of this film, the women who pregnant dealt with the consequences about un-planned pregnancy. In this film, Juno seems to take the matter lightly. She doesn't concerns about being pregnant, her parents supports her, her best-friend still there, and if she's socially disturbed with her school-mates about her pregnancy, she doesn't show it safe by a simple sentence through a phone. Well, i guess i had expecting too much, and i had expecting that the film would going the 'right' way by unravel and elaborate the hardships of being pregnant, which clearly, Juno has a minimum dose of such hardships to face against.