Quirky people are funny. Quirky teenagers are funny. Quirky people who whack you over the head with their burger-phone screaming “Look at me! I’m really really quirky!” are just plain annoying. Hated it.
My thread from last year - My most conflicted Oscars ever…
As for* Juno* I said:
**Juno **was a fairly amusing movie that I recommended to friends. However the script was seriously flawed. In the first 5 minutes every character speaks with the same voice, the one that is meant to show us how “special” Juno is. I thought the chances of it being nominated were similar to the chances of Porky’s . I was going to start a thread about how it is the worst script to ever win but a look back over the last few years shows that crap wins most years.
I wasn’t trying to imply that you were a voice in the wilderness. It’s just that you’re like a figurehead for movie critical review here, and you represent everyone with the same opinion in this thread.
If anyone sounded like they had a team of writers feeding awkward lines through an ear bud, it was Scarlet and Rhett.
But I think that’s it–she is trying too hard, as Juno. Not the actress who played her, but the character herself: she’d like to think she’s all hip and great and cool etc, but really she’s a girl who got knocked up and the other kids treat her like poison.
Frankly, Paulie Bleeker is an immature creep who hurts her (and doesn’t deserve her), but when she turns to Bateman’s character, she learns that the Paulie’s of the world don’t really grow up, so of them. It’s betrayal on a deep level and one of the coolest bits of the movie (for me) was the pact between Juno and Garner’s character. Juno leaves that note for her (it’s revealed at the end). Together they will do what is right for this baby.
Looking at it that way, it’s a bit of a misandrist movie. But then again, Paulie does nothing to help Juno at all in her predicament and Mr Creepy Older Guy tries to hit on her. The men in this movie aren’t exactly sterling folk.
Before reading this thread, I had never thought of Paulie as just a “The Boy”–but he is. And truly, his character does not deserve even that appellation. IMO, he’s a jerk-a passive jerk who “lets” things happen. If Juno were truly smart and hip, she’d never have gone back to him. Again, IMO.
There may be a bit of Paglian post-feminist theory going on there: a) this is the nature of men; b) that nature is also why women love them, because all of us are helpless before the nature of the sexes; c) better off just to go thru that phase and enjoy the freedom, then bond with women when things matter.
Are you sure you meant “Camille Paglian” and not “John Normanian”?
Juno’s dad seemed like a pretty decent guy and a good father, especially in contrast to what we know of her mother.
I don’t think Paulie seemed like such a bad kid either, just not very mature and really not ready for dealing with a pregnancy.
I think what he meant was, the (faux) scripture quoting was not Jules being himself; it was part of the Bad Mutha Fucka Hitman persona he put on when he was working. Notice his demeanor when he and Vincent are walking into the building and riding the elevator, and the abrupt change as soon as they get into the apartment. He even said as much when they were in the diner.
Said it right before the scene,
CMC fnord!
I liked Juno a lot. It wasn’t the most realistic movie in a lot of ways, but it was cute & funny. I didn’t find Juno as a character all that far-fetched…I thought it was an interesting portrayal of teen at the cusp of adulthood, and how they can swing from being really mature and together to really childlike and vulnerable in the blink of an eye. The dialogue was a little overly cutesy, but I didn’t find it grating. Maybe partially because I saw it long after it was out in the theaters and had heard so much about it that I expected it to be heavily stylized and unrealistic. The fact that the screenwriter apparently modeled Juno after herself…that I find pretty much pretentious in the extreme (considering the way the character was written), but I do have to admit that I enjoyed the movie.
It was occasionally amusing for me, but I didn’t care for the dialogue either. And the whole “fingernails” scene was just dumb. What made it worse, though, was the use of an irritating indie song EVERY FIVE FREAKING MINUTES.
I didn’t hate the dialog, but I didn’t find it to be reflective of my own teenage experience. I wasn’t expecting it to. It felt like an updated, more extreme version of the dialog in Clueless. It also had a similarly bright, glossy look, which I enjoy for some reason.
I liked the movie a lot the first time I saw it, but I don’t think it holds up well to repeated viewings. The whole thing is like a teenager trying too hard. Like that new friend you meet and everyone gets a kick out of her because she’s off-the-wall and clever but the novelty wears off really fast because she’s on all the time and you start noticing how contrived it is.
I would have hated Juno if she went to my high school. The whole “I’m so much cooler than everyone else because I don’t care about being cool but I’m also trying super hard to be my own edgy version of cool” thing makes me want to barf.
As others have mentioned, the Rainn Wilson convenience store scene was awful. He should just stick to being Dwight.
But I did like the Jason Bateman/Jennifer Garner stuff a lot. And little things like “You should grow a moustache” were pretty funny.
Works for me either way.
Some lines were stupid (e.g., “That’s one doodle that can’t be undid, homeskillet.”) but I thought it had plenty of funny moments as well. (E.g., the dad’s reaction to finding out that Bleeker is the father.) On the whole, the stylized dialog produced more laughs than groans, for me at least.
Every time they tried to throw in Napoleon Dynamite like catch phrases to make the movie a cult classic I shuddered. The adjective ‘wizard’ was unnecessary.
Well I quite liked it although Ellen Page wasn’t near as good as she was in Hard Candy
That was pretty much the entire movie.
Haw. I have described this movie to customers as “Napoleon Dynamite: The Chick Flick.”
This is hands down the best description of this movie I have yet seen.
It would be kind of interesting to do a cross section of people here who hated the Juno dialog and who post in other threads about their love for any/all Joss Wheadon works.
I’m not saying Juno is Shakespeare or anything, but I find any of Joss’ dialog to be at least as, if not more, contrived and annoying.