Juno: Genuine Connections

A MINI-REVIEW
BY DIANA DEKAJLO

We’ve all been channel surfing and come across a sappy Lifetime movie where a teenage runaway has just returned home after living on the streets for two weeks, after developing a cocaine addiction and acquiring a forty-something sugar-daddy, who’s also her dealer. And, of course, you tune in just as a badly composed score crescendos, and the once-wholesome, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, fifteen-year-old turns, weepy eyed, to her single mother, and chokes out, “I’m pregnant.”

Well, thankfully, you won’t find any of this crap in Juno, a movie that follows Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page), an edgy, self-assured sixteen-year-old who calls penises “pork swords” and refers to Franklin Roosevelt as “the cute one, with polio.” It’s a breath of fresh air to watch a person on screen who is real. And when I say “real”, I mean, “I-don’t-care-what-you-think, poke-fun-at-herself, doesn’t-take-shit-from-anyone, if-you-don’t-like-me-you-can-fuck-off” –type of real.

In a movie that doesn’t have CGI effects, stuntmen, or stuff exploding every forty-five seconds, you get the chance to appreciate the wit and humor in a very cleverly written script. After walking out of the theater, you feel happily fulfilled, as if you’ve just made a new friend, or rather, a cast of new friends. From Juno’s parents, who’d rather she was “on hard drugs or expelled from school” rather than pregnant, to Paulie Bleecker, Juno’s awkward, lanky, Orange Tic-Tac-obsessed best friend and father of her child, you feel a genuine connection to everyone on screen.

Two ‘Pork Swords’ (or Thumbs, if you prefer) up for Juno.