Pregnant with laughs and tears: Juno (12A)

Reviews

Juno, Ellen Page and Michael Cera.

Friday, February 08, 2008

Give thanks for a bittersweet comedy that walks the line between cute and twee, says Noel McAdam

Juno (12A, 96 mins) Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Alison Janney

She smokes an unlit pipe, and talks into her hamburger telephone. "I'm calling," she says, "to procure an abortion."

She is Juno, "pretty solid", as she says herself, nice, needy, a little nerdy, dealing with things way beyond her maturity level.

For Juno is also pregnant: she's checked three times. But her boyfriend seems more into orange Tic-Tacs than fatherhood.

Her mom took off 10 years ago, and step-mom (Janney) is waiting for her to move out so she can get a dog. So far, so fairly ordinary.

But from this most cliched of situations, comes a charming, highly original, slice-of-life movie.

Already nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture and Original Screenplay, this is a sweet 'n' sour, sarcastic and yet life-affirming comedy from Jason Reitman, who gave us the joyful Thank You for Smoking.

Juno is full of lines which will stay with you for, well, however long movies lines tend to stay with you, such as when she gives dad JK Simmons (the actor who plays irascible newspaper editor J Jonah Jameson in the Spiderman movies) and step-mom the news. "I've got heartburn radiating to my kneecaps and haven't been (to the toilet) since Wednesday."

Or: "Being pregnant makes me pee like Seabiscuit."

She opts for adoption, but doesn't want the baby to be brought up " broken and shitty like everyone else's family".

She finds the model, childless couple, or so it seems, until they decide to go in for the very latest thing, something called a "collaborative divorce." Whatever happens, there will be no baby shower.

Dad, however, is at least trying to be helpful. "I don't want you to get ripped off by a couple of baby-starved wingnuts," he says.

Stepmum's attempts to be equally positive don't come off. "Someone is going to get a sweet gift from Jesus in this garbage-dump of a situation," she opines.

When the adopting couple fall out of love, Juno even considers China " where they give babies like free iPods".

But this is a comedy not too cynical to be afraid to be warm, where the humour stays human.

So as Juno swells, so will your heart. These are characters you can actually care about.

"I'm losing my faith in humanity," she tells her dad, who comes back: "Can you narrow that down for me?"

It recognises people are complex, contradictory, trying to express feelings they have not yet identified. And it's clever, but not clever-clever.

The wonderful Janney, suffering from over-identification as the White House press lady CJ in the long-running West Wing, has restored herself for the Big Screen.

But it is Page and Cera who out-perform everyone else (Page, until now probably best known for the last X-Men movie is up for a leading actor Oscar).

Remarkably, Juno finds the most obvious solution is the fella right in front of her face, who just happens to be the father. And the first flutterings of this strange thing called ... love.

Hanky, anybody?