Juno: Exceeding "Expectations"

My Thoughts on Juno

By Professor Patsy Cooper
Faculty Fellow

This is the year of the graphic novel turned movie, right? When we get to see a writer and filmmaker transform minimal dialogue and minimal illustrations into talking, moving pictures. By all accounts, the experiment—Persepolis—is a wonderful success. And I’m going to see it later this month with some 15 UHall residents (watch your email for the ticket announcement).

My problem is that I think I saw it last night with some other UHall residents. Only it was called Juno. And it is, indeed, great. But it wasn’t what I was expecting. I went into the theater knowing only that the movie is a hit. Nominated for Best Picture, in fact. That Ellen Page is some terrific up and coming actress. That Juno’s story is funny and sad and sweet. Mostly, I read any number of reviews that called the movie pro life and —thank God—a red light on unprotected sex. Or called it pro-choice movie and—it’s about time—a green light on the same subject. In any case, moviegoers are at least asked to see the humor in a pregnant sixteen-year-old making her way through the staring crowds of what seems to be a 3,000-kid high school. Funny, Juno may be. Unambiguous and uncontroversial it is not.

Yet, putting the story aside for the moment, for me the most remarkable thing about the movie was how it unfolded through dialogue that was as crisp and efficient as any comic book, sorry, graphic novel, I’ve read. So unexpected was it, that it actually threw me at first. I wondered where a movie could be going after an opening scene in which the clearly agitated Juno is swigging down Sunny D and openly requesting her third pregnancy test from an older, sarcastic, face-it-you’re-preggers, store clerk. Ditto for each scene. Not a word or facial expression is wasted. Each character and event obligingly advanced the plot in a critical way. And as amazing as Ellen Page is as she morphs from the opening line drawing illustrations (just to underscore my point) into walking, talking flesh and blood, she is in excellent company, especially with Allison Janney beside her.

As for the story, like the best of comic books, the movie delivers big time, though I honestly don’t know what all the fuss is about. Yes, Juno has pre-meditated, unprotected sex that is totally sanctioned by the movie. But she gets her comeuppance when she takes herself to a bizarre, Cohen Brothers-imagined abortion clinic, which is guarded by a sign-waving fool, who informs Juno that the fetus/child (take your pick, as the movie says) she’s carrying already has fingernails. Good thing her father and stepmother take the news of her pregnancy so well. And good thing there’s a wealthy couple just waiting to adopt the baby. Granted, the woman, Vanessa, seems a bit obsessed with her House Beautiful world, but she really wants a baby and, besides, she’s got a hip, musician husband to balance her out in Juno’s eyes, even if he is bridling a bit under all that domesticity. Clearly, it will all work out in the end.

Of course, you’d have to be downright stupid to view this as your backup plan.

But none of this is what ultimately delivers (no pun intended) the movie. Once I settled into its rhythm, and the idea of a sixteen-year-old offbeat and anti-cheerleader girl with a cheerleader best friend, so sure of herself that she and her nerdy boyfriend are truly cool, I thought I would just sit back and enjoy the ride. The strike for female liberation in the movie, it turns out, however, is not Juno’s rejection of life as a high school musical. Nor is it her deliberate plan to be “sexually active” or have an abortion or not have one. What’s actually liberating is Juno’s discovery that independence, that is, emotional independence, is neither hip nor cool if you can’t make a commitment to the people you believe in. What matters most is that you (and the tic tacs) show up. As does her father. Her stepmother. Bleecker. And, though the movie makes us wait just long enough to wonder if she will, so does Vanessa, who is revealed as a truly cool maternal soul, however uptight. Of course, by then, she’s sans hipster, since he turns out to be a real jerk.