No. You didn’t.
I think there’s something to that. I watched Juno and was amused, but then I saw an interview with Ellen Page and she just came off as an insufferable little snot.
This. I just saw it last night. I thought it was great.
I just have to say… this was really polite, for SDMB moderator standards. And look at the reaction you received.
I’ve got to pitch in with lissener and the others to point out that unrealistic dialogue is something that works and sometimes doesn’t. You can’t hand wave away Juno’s dialogue, which goes way beyond “unrealistic” and into “ludicrous,” by saying movies all have unrealistic dialogue.
A lot of movies have special effects, but some use them well; Star Wars was a better movie than Highlander II. A lot of movies have bloody, explosive battle scenes, but Saving Private Ryan was still a better movie than Windtalkers. Any movie technique can be effective or not effective depending on the skill with which it is employed. The use of slo-mo in “The Natural” works extremely well. The use of slo-mo in “Battlefield Earth” is pointless and absurd. Robin Williams’s crazy schtick is extremely effective in “Aladdin” and “Good Morning Vietnam” but in “Patch Adams” it just doesn’t work.
All movies have stylized dialogue but you can’t say all movies are equally good. “Juno” doesn’t work in part because the dialogue just repeatedly defies the suspension of disbelief. Whe The Joker talks in “The Dark Knight” you find yourself pulled into the story, and The Joker comes off as frightening and unsettling; in Juno, the characters come off as actors being asked to repeat ridiculous lines. Part of the problem is, I suspect, that the cutesy-ultrawitty-teen shit has been done before. Juno might have been better if it’d been made in 1991, before we saw a lot of this sort of crap, but being made when it was it just came away looking like the producers were trying very, very hard to make A Gilmore Girl Gets Pregnant.
I agree. Although I liked the adult characters and their storylines- especially the slow reveal that Adoptive Dad was a bit of a shit - enough to forgive the hipster dialogue.
I do not like Cera, but Ellen Page was sweet. Agree about the lack of drama surrounding her best friend being another plus point.
I liked Juno and have watchd it several times. It’s a relaxed, friendly, fun movie about teen pregnancy with a soundtrack that’s also relaxed and fun. Makes a great background movie when you’re doing other things and you can’t put porno on. My only problem was that the male lead was just another iteration of The Boy. When will they develop realistic, well-thought-out characters for male actors!!!???
Those characters weren’t on this planet.
Heh - this post made me laugh out loud - I’ve totally met these guys.
In other news, I liked Juno - I thought it was fun.
Wasn’t a fan. Surprisingly, I thought Jennifer Garner’s performance was the best thing about it.
I caught a 5 minute snippet of “Farewell to Arms” on AMC this morning and not only was the dialogue vomit worthy (Rock Hudson: “My darling. Will I ever see you again?”) but everyone spoke in those horrible affected quasi-British accents.
In comparison to what dreck Hollywood used to turn out, “Juno” is very realistic.
Now if we could only get Hollywood to hire size 10 actresses who don’t have flawless skin and perfect teeth, we’d be stepping in the right direction.
This is exactly my point; it’s not so much that the lines are terrible and unrealistic, it’s that you notice that they’re terrible and unrealistic. You feel like you are watching a movie. You feel like you are watching someone recite from a script. That is not the sign of a good movie, IMHO.
Thanks, Sublight! And by the way, I’m actually not a big Star Wars fan. Sorry.
People’s opinions vary of course, but to criticize Juno for having clever dialog that’s supposedly unrealistic is just odd. First off, if you think clever, snarky speaking is unrealistic you either need to get out of the house more in general or interact with some people who aren’t total clod heads. Second, isn’t this the board that falls all over itself in love with Joss Whedon, who has made a career of this same kind of writing? How about the love for Clerks, which also is just an excuse to string clever dialog through a film with no real plot and horrible, horrible acting. I love Whedon’s stuff (most of it, the Dr. Evil blog thing was just god-awful) and like early Kevin Smith stuff (before he decided he could get away with anything because his fanbase would lap up dreck just because it’s him), and it’s for many of the same reasons I liked Juno.
And as far as the music supposedly being faux-folk, again, get out more. The indie folk scene is doing very well, thank you very much, and there’s a reason it’s popular.
I did not find Harpo’s dialogue stylized at all.
Hey, I loved the stylized dialogue in Juno. If I want to hear actual people speak, I’ll go listen to actual people speaking.
The only thing I found really annoying about Juno was Rainn Wilson. He delivered his lines in an oddly affected way-- a way that made his character seem (weirdly) threatening and entirely unsympathetic to Juno. I think that character’s lines should have been delivered with at least some hint of affection for the title character (presumably she’s a regular at the store) and sympathy for the title character’s dilemma.
I’m not criticizing it for being clever. I’m criticizing it for being “clever.”
Odd, I would say that the “clever” snarky people who supposedly talk like Juno are the ones who are clodheads. And yes, I do avoid such people. Despite this, I am a graduate TA who comes in contact with a lot of students, some of whom are brilliant, and some of whom are like Juno. None of them talk like this. But I like I said before, it’s not so much that the dialogue is unrealistic; it’s that I noticed every second of it, and knew they were reading off a script. That’s how forced it was.
As RickJay stated above, it’s not the style of writing itself so much as how artfully it is done. The stylized writing in Juno is gross, unrefined, and far too enamored with itself. It is sickening.
It’s popular so it must be good?? Are you serious? Have you listened to Top 40 radio recently? Have you seen the big blockbuster movies of late? Have you watched the most popular television shows? Are the popularity of these in any way indicators of quality?
Come on, give us a proper answer.
I like to say that if it’s funny, it doesn’t need an excuse. What you’re saying about Whedon’s stuff is mostly true (I did think Clerks, unlike the rest of Kevin Smith’s work, actually had something to say), but I enjoyed those things and I did not enjoy Juno.
Is Whedon’s dialogue realistic? No, but it somewhat resembles the way some geeks joke about themselves, so there’s some resonance. Smith’s dialogue is a little bit like the way some disaffected pop-culture junkies talk, too. Although nowadays I think they’re imitating Kevin Smith more than the other way around.
Does Juno have something like that going on? I don’t think so. I didn’t connect with the characters because they spent the whole movie spouting dialogue that was supposed to be clever and ironic, but emotionally revealing. Meanwhile it wasn’t funny OR true to life, so what was left?
Maybe it wasn’t true to your life, or funny by your definition, but, you know, lots of people can say the same thing about the dialog from whatever TV and movies you like. It’s not like there’s an objective test of these things.
Lots of people thought the dialog was funny, and the movie is well regarded as being very true to life. And from the people I’ve seen who have liked it (both in my circle of friends and as far as other people in the entertainment industry who have commented upon it), it’s not that these people are idiots or anything.
The scripture quoting is unrealistic. But it’s not really dialogue as such, just something odd one person likes to say.
I don’t realize what in particular you disagree with in the “dead nigger storage” bit. Quentin is too articulate for the situation? Too blasé? It’s weird to use the expression “dead nigger storage”?