Jason Reitman: Juno (2007)

[Chris Knipp]

JASON REITMAN: JUNO

A real smart girl comedy

Review by Chris Knipp

Like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad, Juno is partly an offshoot of the now increasingly seminal-seeming TV series "Freaks and Geeks," with a loosely unified point of view, with certain actors recurring, and above all with Judd Apatow as presiding Master of the Revels. That this is, overall, a fortunate turn of affairs for American film comedy has never been more obvious than in the charming and revelatory new film about a teenage girl, Juno.

Juno is a sixteen-year-old in high school who gets pregnant. She's an extension of Linda Cardellini's "Freaks" character, Lindsay. She's not quite a Freak or a Geek, but she refuses to conform and she's provocative, articulate, and aware she doesn't know who she is yet. In her every burst of repartee Juno's striving to define herself, stay honest and sane, and not take any crap off anybody. The important thing is the character more than the issue, though it's the measure of the fluidity and smarts of the writing that you can't really separate the two.

Though his character Paulie is marvelously understated, Michael Cera, the tall young Canadian who's also one of the principals of Superbad, also defines the frame of reference a little differently from previous comedies. He's Juno's boyfriend--or her non-boyfriend, because that's still undecided too, and he's the father of her child. He's not a bad guy nor is he capable of making things alright. He's just a kid, like her. But he's sweet and decent. Juno tells him he behaves well and makes it look easy. But he says actually he works really hard at it.

After an icky visit to an abortion clinic and a chat with an Asian classmate picketing it, Juno and her girlfriend Lea (Olivia Thirby) decide she’s going to have the baby and they find a yuppie couple seeking adoption in a local free paper. When Juno visits Vanessa and Mark Loring (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) they’re yuppies living in a McMansion, but they’re sincere. Right away Juno bonds alarmingly with Mark, because he’s a musician, even if he’s sold out, writing for commercials.

We can’t tell how this all pans out because Juno is first of all a journey with surprising bumps along the way, but aside from the very funny, very smart writing throughout by Diablo Cody (that’s a lady) and the fact that Ellen Page’s sharp tongue is sweetened by the fact that she’s completely adorable, this movie is rounded out by alternative points of view. Juno’s dad (a very strong J.K. Simmons) is wholly supporting, but she has a stepmother (“The West Wing’s” Allison Janney) whose remarks are tinged with acid. Most importantly for a good while in the middle Vanessa and Mark draw the viewer’s attention. How are they handling all this? What does it mean to have to adopt? What strains is their marriage under? The movie takes a good look at them before going back to Juno.

“Freaks and Geeks” ends with members of the two groups hanging out together. To begin with Lindsay was a bit of both. If she hung out with the Freaks, her younger brother Sam, the number two character, was 100% Geek. Paulie is a kind of geek: he does extremely well in school. But he’s also a jock, perpetually seen in running togs or with the cross country team. The essence of the “Freaks and Geeks” point of view is that though categorizing in youth is a relentless social process, categories are essentially limiting and false.

Juno comes across as smarter and less lame than Knocked Up. It’s not a fat Jewish boy’s fantasy of being accepted by a cute girl. It’s ending is a bit of a cop-out, but essentially what matters is the way the prevailing voice encompasses young attitudes and realities As in the Apatow comedies the message remains that it’s hip and okay to be a good person. But since this is a collective kind of comedy that’s been emerging, there’s no one truth and some of the scenes and ideas in Juno too are lame while some others are exceptionally humorous and witty.

These new comedies are cool: they devise a loose system where it’s hard to go wrong, and Juno goes particularly right. This is the real woman’s version of Knocked Up: that’s why the title is the name of the girl. Juno remains Juno—even “knocked up.” This is the essential point. How Mark and Vanessa turn out is left hanging. The ending feels a little bit incomplete. Partly this is TV series thinking, where it's assumed there's always another episode coming along later to tie up loose ends. It’s in the classic nature of comedy to embrace people and reconcile us to things. Juno like the best new American comedies provides a framework to see contemporary reality and embrace it. Director Jason Reitman, whose first film, Thank You for Smoking, was more satirical and political, has come into the fold.

When Juno's had her baby, she and Paulie go back to playing in a band together. In high school, it's a lot better when music is the most important thing, not having babies. Yes, this is "feel-good" stuff, but it's smart, even if its sitcom-casual structure has some holes in it. Maybe Apatow has peaked as a comedy impressario with this one. Word is out that he takes a dive with Walk Hard.

[oscar jubis]

Somewhat taken aback by this review. What does Judd Apatow, who gets referenced repeatedly, have to do with Juno? Maybe I missed him in the credits...Anyway, it doesn't appear to me he had much creative input here. Ms. Cody's blog was discovered by the film's producer and she sent him a "sample script" and it was filmed with very few and minor alterations. As far as I'm concerned the inspiration for Juno has less to do with Apatow and his tv show and more with the music of The Moldy Peaches and with Kimya Dawson's solo recordings (which form an essential part of the film, I wonder if folks watching are paying attention to the lyrics). The lyrics and vocal style of Dawson are highlighted and a song is repeated for that most gorgeous finale.

I also don't understand why you say the ending feels "a bit incomplete" or that what happens to Mark and Vanessa is "left hanging". Everything seems resolved to me...

Among the pleasures I experienced watching Juno is that the love story is fairly original (as far as movies are concerned; unlike the couple from Knocked Up, these kids were best friends before they had sex) yet wholly believable. I also love the way our (or just mine?) sympathies shift effortlessly from one of the adoptive parents to the other within the duration of the narrative.

[Chris Knipp]

The Judd Apatow "Freaks and Geeks" connection is one that I'll have to go into further. Perhaps the only obviousl link is Michael Cera. I'm sure the "Freaks and Geeks" sensibility is present in Juno. It's more a gestalt of influences, not purely Apatow. More about this later. Robert Wolensky spoke of "Page, channeling Linda Cardellini's character from Freaks and Geeks. . ." of course he and others said (as he puts it) that the film is "choking on its quotation marks" in its early sequences, and then settles down--into being more itself, you might say. But witty and charming as it is, it's built up out of pastiches. But they work. I enjoy Juno.

It's kind of obvious why the film is incomplete, isn't it? Mark and Vanessa's marriage is breaking up, and we dont' know what's become of them. Or what's going to become of the child. So it's all resolved in a song? Maybe that's your way of seeing things. . . . not mine.

Agreed sympathies toward the two adoptive parents do shift, giving them a surprise interest. I'm down with the flick. I would agree it feels original, but don't see how the points you mention prove that.

[oscar jubis]

*What we have here is the first script by a writer (real name: Brook Busey-Hunt) who should be considered separately, and given her due as an original creative force. Perhaps this wasn't as obvious to you in her first outing, perhaps the casting of Mr. Cera created some associations that can't be debated. I thought, if anything, the material had more relation to Napoleon Dynamite than anything connected with Apatow. Anyway, over the next five years, these Diablo Cody projects will reach us: an adaptation of her highly autobiographical book "Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper", and scripts titled "United States of Tara" and "Jennifer's Body". The character of Juno is based on Cody's teenage self, a girl who hides behind her wit (The events are purely fictional).

*No, it's not resolved in a song. The song just deepens our knowledge of the relationship between the teenagers. SPOILERS Mark and Vanessa break up and Mark moves to a loft in Manhattan and Vanessa stays in the house and adopts Juno's baby by herself.

[Chris Knipp]

Indeed Brook Busey-Hunt AKA Diablo Cody is a bright and promising new writer who deserves plenty of credit for what she has achieved in Juno, and who one hopes will go on producing equally good screenplays in future. I did mention her, didn't I?

You are right that Judd Apatow has absolutely nothing directly to do with the movie called JUNO. I was speaking pretty loosely---too loosely, no doubt, and you are doubtless justified in taking me to task for it; but if my comments cause some people to think about the relationship of Juno to the slew of new comedies spawned by Apatow and the "Freeks and Geeks" sensibility, I think that would be a good thing.

It still makes sense to speak of Apatow as "Master of the Revels" because he's the most prominent name for the new film comedies in Hollywood right now --though by "Apatow" I mean not just him but the group of people who've worked with him on "Freaks and Geeks" and whatever else he's done.

"Freaks and Geeks" had only a short run, but it is one of the most perceptive, honest, and funny, and forgiving treatments of adolescence of the last decade, and belongs to a period that was formative for people like Ms. Cody. In the real world Hollywood is important, and Apatow just came out top on a Hollywood 50-person Smart List. He's the current "it" boy not as a star, director, or writer, but as a mastermind behind film comedy.

It would be a truly odd circumstance of Apatow and his crowd were never mentioned or thought about during the production of Juno.

As I mentioined (misspelling his name) Wilonsky in the Voice spoke of Page's character in Juno as "channeling Linda Cardellini's character from Freaks and Geeks." It would be logical to begin with Linda Cardellini's character in a discussion of Ellen Page's Juno. Not in the acting but in the writing, not in terms of mimicry but of a similar sensibility.

One could relate the nerdiness of Napoleon Dynamite (a movie I personally like a lot) peripherally to the Freaks and Geeks thing, but I don't exactly see what it has to do with Juno, without having that explained. What are the analogies?

[mouton]

Evening gentlemen ... I too was wondering why all the Judd Apatow talk throughout your review, Chris, but I feel you may be simply saying the man has reshaped American comedy as of late and Juno is one of the results. I did not see that but I am sure we will be seeing movies in the near future that definitely bare a more distinct resemblance. In fact, I was a little sad for Greg Mottola earlier this year when Superbad was pushed as an Apatow film when he only served as producer and had zero to do with the directing or writing. I like Judd but he runs the risk of becoming overrated very fast if people keep attaching his name to everything that is supposed to be funny.

I was reading a little on Diablo today and I feel like this script probably comes more from her than anywhere else ... even the music Oscar refers to as potential influence was supposedly suggested by Ellen Page after she was cast as she felt her character would listen to that. Diablo has lived an interesting existence (an advertising executive who left it all to strip professionally) so I'm sure that she could put together this script from her own mind.

Anyhow, I didn't love this movie the first time I saw it, as I mention in my review. What I don't mention is that I had to see it a second time in order to write about it and I was crying by the end.


JUNO
Written by Diablo Cody
Directed by Jason Reitman

Juno MacGuff: I think I’m, like, in love with you.
Paulie Bleeker: You mean as friends?
Juno MacGuff: No, I mean, like for real. You’re like the coolest person I’ve ever met and you don’t even have to try, y’know.
Paulie Bleeker: I try really hard, actually.

I must be older at heart than I thought. I was instantly put off by Jason Reitman’s JUNO. Here you have this little movie about a pregnant teenager who is just trying to do the right thing by everyone and all I could think was how hard it was trying to have its own marginalized identity. A sketched doodle of the word, “autumn” appears at the top of the screen; the sounds of Barry Louis Polisar’s indie acoustic music begin to play as a comic book-like animated title sequence takes over the screen; Rainn Wilson, working as a convenience store counter clerk, says things like, “Your eggo is preggo,” and “What’s the prognosis, Fertile Myrtle?” It was as though Reitman was pulling out every trick he could think of to make sure we knew how edgy his film was. “We are indie!” it screamed like a loud teenager yammering away in the back of the theatre. Only, just like that teenager, JUNO is much deeper than it first appears and simply requires a closer look to see Reitman’s sensitive, gentle hand at work. JUNO just may be the most earnest and humble film I’ve seen all year. It’s merely hiding behind a tough exterior.

That tough exterior comes courtesy of first-time screenwriter, Diablo Cody, and is reinforced by Reitman’s strong understanding of the nuanced material. It is honest, frank and forgiving, which is a refreshing take from the usual damnation pregnant teenage girls suffer on film. Parents don’t scream and shout when they find out about their daughter’s situation; nobody forbids anyone from seeing anybody else ever again. It is not the least bit dramatic considering that exaggeration colors mostly every word uttered on screen. (Look, I can embellish too!) The non-judgmental approach allows almost every character to come from his or her own perspective and place in the story, making them much more real than they let on. We know that prospective adoptive mother, Vanessa (Jennifer Garner), is concerned with image and perception because we see her hands straightening frames and towels while waiting to receive company before we even see her face. We know that her husband, Mark (Jason Bateman), is not as enthusiastic about the adoption as his wife is because he isn’t by her side when Juno (Ellen Page) first appears at their door. These kinds of subtle visual touches act like prenatal vitamins meant to ensure that Cody’s script is born with a healthy heartbeat.

JUNO also gives birth to a new star, albeit a little bit past her due date (despite her young age of 20). Halifax native, Ellen Page, carries the majority of the film and is as complex as they come without making it seem labored (no pun intended). Past starring roles in lesser-known films like HARD CANDY and THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS were explosive and impossible to ignore only the films themselves were overlooked. Turning in another unforgettable performance in a crowd pleaser is sure to get her the accolades and recognition she deserves. Page whips out Cody’s snappy pseudo-hipster speak with fervor and confidence but gives herself away without realizing. She always plays it cool so that no one, including herself, can acknowledge how frightened she must be to be in her position. Her decision to have her baby and put it up for adoption rather than go the abortion route is brave but naïve as she has no idea how adult her decision actually is. She speaks like she has all the answers and yet has no idea what she’s talking about most of the time, but once you catch a glimmer of that fragility, anything that came off as false prior, shows itself as the front that it is.

Reitman, Cody, Page and the rest of the fantastic cast (J.K. Simmons, Alison Janney and the fascinatingly talented and gangly, Michael Cera) light JUNO afire with warmth and genuine caring. This is a movie about real people dealing with the obstacles they’re faced with rather than sitting around and whining about them. On that level, there’s nothing indie about this movie. Instead, JUNO is the perfect portrait of a young girl flung into adulthood unexpectedly. She feels prepared, realizes she isn’t, learns that she needs others and yet carries herself like she’s been the one calling the shots all along. It sure sounds awfully adult to me.

www.blacksheepreviews.com

[Chris Knipp]

Of course Diablo wrote the script. And she seems to be a very good writer, though I'm not sure whether she has a consistent point of view or not, or whether she is really original. Time will tell. Another issue is where Jason Reitman is coming from; whether he has a consistent point of view. I liked this much more than his debut, Thank You For Smoking; but has he a point of view, or does he just film other people's stories? The Voice's Robert Wolinsky notes that over-cuteness you are concerned about at Juno's outset this way:

At first, Juno threatens to choke on its quotation-marks catchphrases—like when The Office's Rainn Wilson, cameoing as a convenience-store clerk, tells 16-year-old Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) that her positive pregnancy test is "one doodle that can't be undid, home skillet." Or when Olivia Thirlby, as Juno's best cheerleading pal Leah, uses "Phuket, Thailand" as an expletive. Or when Juno describes the perfect adoptive parents as a "cool graphic designer, mid-thirties, with a cool Asian girlfriend who totally rocks the bass— but I don't want to be too particular." Our heroine also digs McSweeney's, Iggy and the Stooges, and Dario Argento's Suspiria. Arch? Argh, yes.

But after a little while, the movie calms down and finds its center—no, its heart. . .

I think that's valid. It does find its heart as time goes on, pretty soon in fact. I don't think it's trying to be "indie"--not sure what that would mean in terms of dialog--but trying to be cool and arch and hip.

I don't know how much we can hang on Juno. She is adorable and perceptive and articulate and witty, a good combination. She has her feet on the groud while recognizing as I noted in my review--I think this is important for any teenager--that she barely knows who she is yet. She isn't anybody yet; she's not fully formed. She may be into one thing and be into something completely different in a year or so. But she may be with Paulie. Rather than ultra-indie, I think this movie is just a little more up to date and cool kind of mainstream high school comedy. It relates to Freaks and Geeks's Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellni) as I've noted, but also to various sharp-witted and -tongued young ladies that you find in some Brat Pack Eighties youth flicks, like in Heathers--only humanized and given a real problem.

I may appear to have spoken out of turn in mentioning Judd Apatow. But we'll see about that. I think his influence has been pervasive, and has almost metasticized lately. I have not felt threatened by it. It's seemed to me positive, But it may be out of hand, or it may be simply burning itself out quickly, now that he's so high profile. Armond White just began his review of Walk Hard with these lines:

Could we be so lucky that the Judd Apatow revolution that ruled Hollywood last summer with Knocked up and Superbad is already over? Apatow co-wrote and co-produced Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a comedy just outside his horny adolescent niche. It has considerably less smut humor to flatter the TV-bred audience’s own sexual insecurities, so Apatow’s desperation is exposed. Walk Hard is Apatow’s undistinguished—in fact, shamelessly derivative—contribution to the mockumentary genre.

Walk Hard borrows Apatow’s slug’s attitude to life for the biography of Dewey Cox, an Alabama white kid who grows up in the mid-20th century to become a blues, folk, country and rock music superstar. Scared-looking, curly-haired John C. Reilly plays the role as a no-brainer continuation of his second-fiddle doofus in the infinitely funnier Talladega Nights. . .

White is right. However, I don't share his desire to dance gleefully on Apatow's grave.

[Chris Knipp]

I'm not sure what's so horrible about being indie. Sometimes indie is a cliche of itself, like The Station Agent. But sometimes it just means "independent." Anyway, I think Juno is just a hip version of mainstream comedy. Comedy has to stay fast on its feet to keep up with what people think is new. I will be impressed when a comedy comes along that's about a girl who gets an abortion. They left that possibility completely out of Knocked Up. In Juno it's considered but quickly rejected. I understand the cast and crew of Knocked Up threw out ideas about abortion that they didn't use, but you may get them in the DVD bonus package. That is at least a small new option as opposed to the complete oblivion of the cutting room floor.

[oscar jubis]

The writer has revealed that the protagonist is based on herself as a teenager except she wasn't always ready with the witty, culture-specific catchphrases. I find them amusing but wished they were more discreetly or less frequently used (my teen kids diagreed with me, find no fault with the film, and plan a second viewing).

I like Armond White characterizing Apatow's niche as "horny adolescent", which is not Juno's niche, but Knocked Up has heart and soul (which does take it a notch above "horny adolescent" stuff like American Pie.

I also like Knipp's comment regarding a "comedy about a girl who gets an abortion". There must be a producer out there willing to finance a film that will be immediately boycotted by 80 million Evangelicals and at least half as many Catholics.

[Chris Knipp]

Apatow's and his cohorts' comedies are definitely male-centric, and horny adolescent or no, obscene laanguage or no, they are wholesome and upbeat to a fault. It is a fat Jewish boy's fantasy as I've said, that the unemployed stoner boy in Knocked Up gets the pretty, smart, accomplished girl, but also not impossible that fat Jewish boys as accomplished as Apatow and his similarly endowed posse members should get the pretty, smart girls. You've already said before, Oscar, that Diablo, who wrote Juno's screenplay, based it on her own life (with verbal enhancements), but people filter their lives through the movies they've seen and the books they've read, when they make a screenplay of their experience. And sometimes the result is a vision of somebody's own life that is as cliche-ridden as some hack's made-to-order teen flick. This one, happily, is not that at all but is fresh and witty and humane, especially when as Wilonsky says, it settles down and stops trying to be allusive and clever. Being based on real experience may be a necessary condition but is not a sufficient one.

Armond White can be a real political and moral conscience, but he's such an angry man sometimes he sees things far too narrowly. (Paradoxically, he sees things narrowly, but in so doing can open our eyes). Of course his condemnation of Apatow is not mine. On the other hand the dominance of anyone usually ends by being undesirable, and if Apatow and those associated with or encouraged by him have turned out some charming and fresh and daring comedies, still we don't want necessarily to be stuck in that groove. I would argue that quite possibly Apatow et al. are partly responsible for Juno's being produced. Didn't somebody pitch it as "Knocked Up for girls"? That in today's context is a good sell. Indeed Knocked Up and the other recent comedies (Superbad, 40-Year-Old Virgin) are smarter and more sophisticated than American Pie. One gets the feeling the filmmakers are being real, not just crude. They deserve credit for slipping that through in Hollywood. Hollywood deserves credit for giving it a chance. But it's not revolutionary. As I've said and as is a truism, most comedy is not revolutionary but reconciles us with things as they are, even when it titillates us with the feeling that we're being outlandish or wicked.

Armond White didn't review Juno in The New York Press; his associate Eric Kohn did and Kohn wrote:

Juno borrows rhythms from any number of contrived teen comedies, but it re-energizes them with dialogue that sparkles.

That is a pretty fair assessment. The writing is good, and Ellen Page is good at delivering her lines. The supporting cast is fine. Reitman at the very least doesn't get in their way. I like this movie a lot more than sucn self-consciously "indie" efforts as Little Miss Sunshine. In place of a gang of lovable eccentrics it gives us everyday people with tough but everyday problems.

[Chris Knipp]

This new Juno soundtrack CD may appeal to you, Oscar, unless it is redundant.

[bix171]

Diablo Cody's smart, funny, wayward screenplay is Juno's star, although Jason Reitman's film has a lot more going for it, notably some fine performances from Ellen Page, in the title role of a pregnant teenager, Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner as prospective adoptive parents and a surprisingly subdued and effective J.K. Simmons as Juno's father. After a beginning that waste no opportunity for a laugh, even at the expense of credibility, writer Cody takes some very sitcom stock characters, primarily Page's precocious teen and Bateman's yuppie musician, does some interesting things with them and the second half takes a darker, more arresting turn that justifies the tears generated at the end. Ultimately, Juno isn't about what you went in thinking it was about. Reitman, thankfully, slows down the pacing that was so frenetic in his feature debut Thank You For Smoking and his laconic, observatory style blends nicely with Cody's dazzling literary and cultural allusions.

[Chris Knipp]

Juno is a light comedy, with identifiable sit-com elements, however smart and fast-paced the variations on the basic stock material, and since it has been brought to us with tremendous hype, the initial ever-present danger of Juno backlash has been growing into actual backlash and Juno's going to be moving into the Overrated list if we're not careful--which would be a real shame. It's a thoroughly fresh and charming movie, but it's still a little movie, and so let's not break a butterfly upon a wheel with exaggerated claims of its profundinty and "dazzling literary and cultural allusions"--not just yet, anyway. The Onion AV Club, which never has anything to prove and whose practicality hence often impresses me, has already listed Juno in its "Overrated" category, and I quote (get the page context here ):

Picking on a funny, moving little indie film that everyone loves isn't much fun, especially when the movie in question shows the flashes of wit and heart that Juno so often does. But the relentless quippiness and quirkiness of Diablo Cody's script only seems to be as smart about teen life and class differences as many have declared. Nearly every character in the movie—and especially the pregnant high-school heroine well-played by Ellen Page—is at least 20 degrees removed from any reality that a normal human being would be familiar with. Which would be fine for a broad farce. But Juno presents itself more as a sentimental satire, and as such, its commitment to comedy over truth is hollow at best, insulting at worst.

--[Onion] A.V. Club: The Year In Film 2007, By Noel Murray, Keith Phipps, Nathan Rabin, Tasha Robinson, Scott Tobias (December 19th, 2007)

This is how things are unfortunately going and obviously have been for over a month; the "backlash" is old news by now. . A good movie can be spoiled by over-praise, and force the more sensible among us to point to the faults.

P.s. A less high-profile (but quite well-written) online review of Juno that's germane to the "backlash" issue is by Andrew James, whose blog site is called "Row Three." There is a small discussion following, and there is a thread of discussion of the music. James being a Minnesota resident, he provides comments (favorable) on the regional background of the movie. (James's review was posted December 21st.)

[bix171]

Chris Knipp wrote:

let's not break a butterfly upon a wheel with exaggerated claims of its profundinty and "dazzling literary and cultural allusions"--not just yet, anyway.

My comment--specifically the word "dazzling"--was not meant to imply the writing was profound. (Chris, you may want to edit your misspelling.) But Diablo Cody is a fine writer and she has the skill to draw upon what appears to be a voluminous knowledge of pop culture and literary references--hence my use of the tern "dazzling". Does that make me think she's profound? No. This is her first screenplay, so time will tell. (I do think there's enormous promise there, though.) Does that make my comment seem "exaggerated"? Not to me anyway.

I knew from watching the trailer what the dialogue was going to be like and I, too, struggled with the preciousness of the lines coming out of Ellen Page's mouth as I was watching the film. That was my reasoning as I referred to the characters as being "very sitcom stock". But I forgave the film's preciousness when I realized what the film ultimately was about--and it was, to me anyway, most definitely not merely about teenage pregnancy. That was only a part of it and, as it turns out, not the biggest part.

The Onion AV Club, which never has anything to prove and whose practicality hence often impresses me

Let's talk about that for a moment.

We here at Filmleaf or FilmURLd or whatever you wanna call it don't get paid for our opinions. I'd like to think that ours are pretty well thought-out for the most part. We don't have anything to prove.

I assume that the guys at The AV Club do get paid for their comments. After all, The Onion sells advertising. (So does this site, I recognize, but it's a blog anyone can post on, whereas I can't just go and post on The AV Club unless it's at a very specific section of the site.) So in my humble opinion, the critics there have an awful lot to prove--to me anyway--and time after time their writing has come off as merely contrarian. The comments quoted about Juno reinforce my opinion. Looking at their roster of critics, I don't see anything there that qualifies them to be a critic any more than we do--and we open ourselves up to debate any time we write. And we're unpaid.

I guess all I'm saying is that just because it's in print (or online), doesn't make it immediately valid. While I know it's the job of a critic to inform and teach the reader. Sometimes I feel there's a tendency to over-rely on outside comments without considering the source.

In another post, on Jonathan Rosenbaum's retirement, I offered my thoughts on him. Johann response mentioned the fact that Godard considered Rosenbaum on a par with Bazin. Now that put me in my place. My comments, no matter how I may feel about myself, cannot stand alongside Godard's. I'd like to know what Godard would think about the critics at The AV Club.

[Chris Knipp]

Okay, I'll grant if you say so that you didn't mean to suggest the movie is profound even if it has a "darker, more arresting turn." I have to admit I partly just used your comment as a springboard to a larger topic, the fact that Juno has been overhyped (the Onion folks' evaluation) and that that's going to be bad for the movie, and unfortunate, because it really does have charms and nice acting--but a backlash isn't always very good for the ultimate reputation of a film, to put it mildly. Maybe all that wasn't justified just as a reply to you. But "dazzling literary and cultural allusions" certainly suggests brilliance, which is what the Onion guys are not liking in some of the Juno hype. Some of their objection as well as others' like the Row Three blog site people (whom you haven't seemed to pick up on) has a lot to do with the fact that very little about the movie is real or true, most notably the girl's talk, while the movie perports to resolve a "real-life" dilemma in its plot, which I contrasted to the preposterous assassinations in Heathers--another witty, probably wittier, high school comedy that instead of romantic satire is much darker, but lays no claim to literal truth.

Juno is a movie that devolves strangely from its ridiculous and unreal and excessive verbal cleverness through a middle period of really good spot-on humor and tough-situation-facing, down to virtual lump-in-throat declarations of love and the final unplugged blandly cute and corny love duet. It kind of makes you wonder if Diablo Cody is so all-over-the-map how her second effort will come out.

There is no "in print" vs. "online" preference in my comments--I gave "Juno backlash" references from both arenas. I wasn't saying we have anything to prove, vs. Onion reviewers, who may not make a whole lot of money, if that is relevant to anything, since it seems like most NY reviewers other than those with the top Times spots don't. I am also not "over-relying" on either print or online or any other sources. The previous comment I posted was just my observations, with evidence cited, of what people have been saying and where that leads the reputation of the movie.