I don’t know. As dialogue goes, “…I try really hard, actually” is one of the sweetest, most pitch-perfect bits of characterization I’ve ever heard.
In my opinion.
Exactly.
Every single pregnancy reveal wherein the pregnancy was deemed a Bad Thing that I’ve ever witnessed or had related to me was typically followed with some sort of, “Didn’t you use protection?” question. Nobody ever asked Juno about it. Her father never said, “Gee, you’re such a clever, clever girl. You couldn’t figure out how to toss a condom on there?” That, more than the dialogue or anything else, rang as insanely false. I still enjoyed parts of the movie, but the absence of birth control was just too…outside of reality for me.
Actually I think he did say something along the line of “I thought you were smarter than this.” Which isn’t exactly belaboring the point, is it ;)? I agree a couple of more throwaway lines wouldn’t have hurt, but I wouldn’t have made a production of it. Maybe a snapish comment from her step-mother when they had their tiny spat.
Hmmm…did the girlfriend ( Juno’s that is, whatever her name was ) make a comment along that line when they were first on the phone? If so that would have been another decent spot.
I was kind of wondering if he meant “I thought you were smarter than that” as in too smart to have sex at all or too smart to have sex without birth control. When he said he didn’t think she was that kind of girl, I thought he just meant he didn’t think she was the kind of girl to have sex at all…or at least not until she was older/more committed. I just kind of got the sense he was sort of implying she was a girl of…er…easy virtue.
Well, Earth girls are easy.
Hostile Dialect,
Hostile Dialect, Narcissist
I had the same impression, Freudian Slit. If there was some allusion to safe sex in there, it was too well-hidden for me to notice. It seemed more a condemnation of girls who have sex, rather than unprotected sex.
The impression I got was totally different, and it very much sounded like they were disappointed that she didn’t use proper protection instead of being upset she was slutting it up to me.
This is just a little hijack. Hope no one minds.
I recently watched Waitress (which was a good movie, and which reminded me of Juno for several reasons) and it seemed like the third part of a Hollywood trend: flirting with pregnant women (lead characters specifically.)
The first time I encountered this was in Fargo where it was portrayed as just an laughably tacky faux pas.
In Juno the lead character reciprocates a little bit in a playful way.
In Waitress it goes a little farther than that.
HOT WET PREGGER MONKEY SEX!!1!
I don’t watch more than 25 movies a year, so I may well have missed a lot of other instances of “flirting with pregnant women.” Have there been others? (And not ones where the good man comes and rescues the fallen woman and they build a new life together.)
Well, I thought that if it was about that, it would have just been “I thought you were smarter than that.” But the way the dad said, “I didn’t think you were that kind of girl” just felt…more emotional. Like, deeper. Plus, they don’t know that she didn’t birth control–what if she had used a condom and it had broken?
And to expand on what Freudian Slit said, we don’t know if she used a condom and it broke, either. It’s never addressed in the film at all, and no one ever asks her about it. Considering that the movie is about a pregnant teenager, that’s kind of weird.
I thought I got a girl pregnant last year, and many people who found out told me I was stupid for not using protection before knowing I hadn’t. Granted, they were right in my case, but PROTECTION! has been drilled into so many people’s heads that a lot of people automatically assume anyone that’s pregnant must have been going at it bareback when that’s obviously not the case.
All that said, I would need to see the scene again to make sure I’m remembering it correctly because Freudian Slit’s post sounds a bit different from my memory of it.
Oh, and to address the OP, I was very indifferent to it despite movies about precocious girls who talk like Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, and/or Quentin Tarantino very much being my kind of movie.
Just checked IMDB quotes and I believe this is the line that’s being discussed:
I’m totally misremembering the scene, if that’s the case. Nevermind, then.
He may have had a good line or two, but basically his sole purpose in the film was to impregnate Juno and be the object of her affections. A woman in a similar role would be instantly recognizable as an iteration of The Girl.
In romantic movie sex, one partner always has to be a gender-role archetype.
I take back what I said about Pulp Fiction. I was just thinking of the parts that struck me as non-stylized and forgetting the other, many parts that were.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
And the film ends up pointing out that he’s inappropriate, immature and untrustworthy - he deeply hurts Juno.
Which was one of the parts I loved and one of the reasons why I can’t say it’s an entirely bad movie. He was this fantasy of adulthood, but ultimately she realizes it is a fantasy, and is terribly disappointed that he’s not the cool adult man he appears to be, but is just an adult man wishing he was a cool kid. If the rest of the movie had been handled as well as that aspect, it would’ve been phenomenal.
This movie put me in an odd place, in that I don’t dislike the movie in and of itself, but I dislike Juno the character so much that I find it difficult to watch. That character rubs me the wrong way for reasons I don’t quite understand (maybe it’s because she strikes me as trying too hard, which has always annoyed me). So, while I’d like to attempt to enjoy the movie, I find I can’t because I dislike the main character so much.
Yeah–the treatment of the Jason Bateman character was good. It felt realistic.
Yeah…she definitely was. I’m kind of snarky myself, but if I were friends with Juno, I think I’d have to request she come with an off button option.