Column:

'Juno' tries hard and succeeds

By Dan Moore

Published Jan. 25, 2008

"Juno" has quirk, as one of its characters might say in that characteristic indie-Midwest non-twang, coming out the yin yang. Its titles are sketch-animated; its characters have names like Bleeker, Bren and, well, Juno; they use words like home skillet and shenanigans. To avoid being forever remembered as the moment when adjectivized Indie — that neurotic turn-of-the-millennium bundle of strange line-readings, low-culture irony and acoustic rock — went too far and imploded like a dying star, it needed to be executed extremely well. Luckily, it is. It might be the last such hipster paean that you enjoy, but in the end "Juno" has enough heart to rise above the sum of its gimmicky tics.

"Juno" is the story of a 16-year-old girl who gets pregnant by her best friend, the quiet, nervous Bleeker, and decides to go through with the pregnancy. There's little plot to set up, and the movie spends most of its running time examining its characters and their milieu. That milieu is played for laughs, certainly, but in a refreshing change—reminiscent of "Napoleon Dynamite"—its lack of worldly self-awareness is not lampooned but celebrated. Juno and non-boyfriend Bleeker, who only have sex one time and have never kissed, are well grounded in spite of their situation and inability to come to terms with their feelings for each other. Even the woman to whom Juno is giving the child is allowed to be a good person in spite of her Josh Groban-y yuppie tendencies.

Juno's family dynamic manages to avoid "Little Miss Sunshine" syndrome, in which parents are either terrible or momentarily decent for realizing they're terrible. Her father (played by the excellent J.K. Simmons) and stepmother are generally supportive people, and screenwriter Diablo Cody allows us to see past their genre-conventional kitsch preoccupations (her father is an HVAC man; her stepmother cuts photographs of cute dogs out of the newspaper.)

Not that the movie completely avoids trying too hard. For one thing, it shares its brethren's bizarre obsession with what is assumed to be middlebrow, Midwestern culture, which causes the usual fixation with childish, blasé brand names and pursuits: Sunny Delight, scrapbooking, minivans and novelty phones all receive serious screen-time.

Most heinously of all, it features yet another invasive soundtrack heavy on weird-voiced acoustic rock. Look, quirky directors: I liked "Rushmore" and "Garden State," you liked "Rushmore" and "Garden State," but it is okay to have an emotional moment without forcing some depressed Mountain Goats knock-off to narrate exactly what's happening.

That's the fundamental thing about "Juno." On one hand, it is a movie that ends with a terrible, overly precious indie sing-along; on the other hand, it's enjoyable in spite of that, a testament to its overall solidness. "Juno" succeeds as an earnest, funny comedy, even with one hand tied—with a kitschy ABA headband, probably —behind its back.