Juno (2007)

Director: Jason Reitman
Writer: Diablo Cody

Sassy teenager Juno MacGuff finds herself unexpectedly pregnant and searches to find a loving couple for her unborn baby while dealing with the fact she has to face adulthood sooner than she expected.

The movie just about everyone loves except me. I nearly turned the damned thing off twice the first time I saw it and it took everything in me to suffer through it again. Overly harsh already? "But it's just a fun, up-beat, quirky, indie-flick. What's wrong with that?" That's exactly the problem with Juno and every other copy-cat, off beat "indie" movie that's churned out onto cinema screens today. But let me back this hate-bus up to the 1950s, France. The Second Great War is over, the Germans are out of Paris, and Europe is finally getting the backlog of American films in one great deluge. This is when the critics of Cahiers du Cinéma (François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, etc.) under the guidance of André Bazin develop what’s now called the auteur theory. Bazin, however, writes several articles on a tendency he's noticed in Italian cinema that's dubbed Italian Neorealism. In one particular article, Bazin makes the argument that realism is an aesthetic choice made by the director. In the case of Juno and the other likeminded features coming out recently, "indie" has become less an industry label and more an aesthetic choice. As far as I can tell, the indie flick look derives from Wes Anderson's work, specifically from Rushmore (1998) onward. But he's able to keep the importance of character and narrative in balance with visual pizzazz and sharp writing. Juno lets the plot be a slave to the dialogue.

I don't deny the fact that there are kids out there as smart and clever as Juno (Ellen Page). But not every waking second of the day. The dialogue is what irritates me the most about this film. I have nothing against odd turns of phrase, colloquialisms, or invented banter between characters, but when you get an hour and half of nothing but… I'm ready to start clubbing baby seals. While the story is solid, Diablo Cody's dialogue is trying so hard to be unique that it draws too much attention to itself and detracts from the narrative. I'm too busy deciphering what the hell Juno & co. are saying and missing important story points.

I honestly feel bad for Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). He gets shoved in the background by Juno and her self-obsessed prenatal idiocy. He vanishes for overly long periods only to reappear to remind the viewer, "hey, Juno's boredom love-child came from somewhere."

While Reitman's direction is well controlled, many scenes are either overwrought or telegraph the next big moment of the film. Example: Juno goes to Women Now to "procure a hasty abortion" but is stopped outside by schoolmate/picketer Su-Chin (Valerie Tian). Su-Chin tells Juno that her baby has fingernails. While in the waiting room, Reitman cuts to close-ups of fingers tapping and scratching. You know what Juno's not going to do.

The bright spot of this movie, oddly enough for me to say, is Jennifer Garner. No one ever accused me of being her fan but I thought she pulled off Vanessa in spades. She kept me guessing and I was invested in her cause. I spent most of the movie thinking she was going to have a come-apart but she's just dealing with a dead-beat husband (Jason Bateman). The dead-beat by the way, I seriously thought he was going to put some moves on Juno…that would've made it interesting.

Here's where I get all nit-picky and snobby. I almost turned the movie off twice while watching. For the record, I've never walked out of a movie at the theatre (even 13 Ghosts [2001]; before the opening credits ended I knew I wasted my money) and I've only turned off maybe three or four one video (Resident Evil [2002] definitely). The first moment came 45 minutes in when Juno drops in on Mark the dead-beat at home. They chit-chat about music (the reference to Sonic Youth's cover of "Superstar" was great; love that song) but then Juno notices a VHS box for The Wizard of Gore (1970). Mark claims that Herschell Gordon Lewis is "the ultimate master of horror." Juno rebuts saying Dario Argento is the ultimate master of horror. They watch the movie and Juno (I cringe ever time I hear her say it) says, "This is even better than Suspiria." My finger was hovering over the power button and it was all I could do to keep from pressing it. Anyone who has ever experienced a classic Argento film (everything up to Opera [1987] pretty much) knows that the man is not just a horror guru but is a visual genius. Lewis on the other hand is not arty. After producing nudie-cuties, he started making gore epics (he is the Grandfather of Gore, I grant him that) just for the money. They're exploitation movies and The Wizard of Gore is far from his best feature. It's over-long, the pacing is slow, and the acting is as good as any of his other movies which is pretty bad. The gore is all that it has going for it. If they were watching Blood Feast (1963) or Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964), then maybe I could maybe understand a "this is just as good as Suspiria” but not better. The comparison between the two masters is unjustified because they work in such divergent styles. I could go on for pages, so on to my next gripe.

Moment number two: the other big pop culture reference. When the baby decides to greet the world, Juno says "Thundercats are go!" That’s not the phrase. It's "Thunder. Thunder. Thundercats, ho!" It happened in EVERY EPISODE, without fail. If you're going to make references to popular culture, at least get your facts straight.

Okay, wrap-up time. A complete waste of time? No. Napoleon Dynamite (2004) was a complete waste of time. Juno is at least amusing in places. Reitman's camera is well handled and though he telegraphs a few moments, he's a solid director. I can see why Cody won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar because it's a script the likes of which we haven't heard since Valley Girl (1983). Here's hoping we never have to hear anything like it again.

27 Dresses (2008)

Director: Anne Fletcher
Writer: Aline Brosh McKenna

Perpetual bridesmaid Jane is forced to deal with her own insecurities as she plans the wedding of her younger sister and the man Jane secretly loves.

First, a little backstory on my connection with this film. I dig romantic comedies. I really do. Despite my love of schlocky horror and foreign art films, I'm a big softy at heart. My good friend Terri suggested that she pick a movie for me to write a blog entry on and I'd choose one for her. She chose 27 Dresses; in retaliation, I chose High Tension (2004). So this entry is going out in tribute to Terri and my own sister Kristy, who's getting married in two weeks. Okay, here goes.

Because my sister and I are very close, we grew up watching movies together. Mostly the classic 80s comedies like Ghostbusters (1984), Clue (1985), The Great Outdoors (1988), and "chick flicks" like When Harry Met Sally… (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Serendipity (2001) and Love, Actually (2003). I've always had a slight problem with the term "chick flick" because it seems that because they're geared toward women I shouldn't like them, but I do despite their adherence to certain genre expectations which I'll get into later. I got so many odd looks in school when that topic would come up.

The modern chick flick developed out of the older film de femmes, woman's weepers, or woman's film that were wildly popular through the 30s and into the 50s. These were largely maternal melodramas like Mildred Pierce (1945) and Stella Dallas (1937) with narratives centering on a strong female lead who sacrifices everything for her family or films of self-discovery like Now, Voyager (1942). At the same time, now classic romantic/screwball comedies were growing in popularity like It Happened One Night (1934), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Bringing Up Baby (1938), and Adam's Rib (1949). These and countless others mixed wonderful writing with accessible characters and stories. The films were largely marketed toward woman, the idea being women would go to the movies in the afternoons while shopping (as dramatized in David Lean's Brief Encounter [1945]). 27 Dresses takes the conventions developed by these earlier films and blends an awareness of itself as a genre picture, which many films began to do in the 1980s and 90s.

The greatest credit in 27 Dresses’ favor is its writing. While the story is very predictable, almost to a fault, the characterization of the leads is refreshing for what easily could have been a run-of-the-mill film. McKenna's story takes the genre expectations inherent in this kind of film (e.g. the cute meet, romantic obstacles, high jinks, etc.) and presents them in a new, reflexive way. The film opens with Jane's (Katherine Heigl) voiceover about finding her vocation at the age of eight helping to save her Cousin Lisa's wedding. Cut to twenty years later and Jane is a bridesmaid in two weddings on the same night, both of which she has coordinated. She shuttles between the two throughout the night, changing dresses in the back of a cab (a fun scene between her and driver Ziggy [Michael Ziegfeld]). All the while, she's caught the eye of Kevin "Malcolm" Doyle (James Marsden), a writer for the Commitments section of the New York Journal.

The subversion beings with the bouquet toss. As the bundle of flowers sails toward Jane, in slow motion of course, another guest comes out of nowhere to bodycheck her out of the way, knocking her unconscious. When she comes to, James Marsden is kneeling over her. Cute meet, check. During the cab ride to her apartment, their banter reveals Kevin's cynical attitude toward marriage which unnerves Jane to no end. He finds her bulky Filofax planner and discovers her almost unhealthy obsession with weddings. Using this, he hopes to move "out of the taffeta ghetto" and into legitimate writing. He pitches the idea to his editor Maureen (Melora Hardin, channeling her character of Jan from The Office to an extent) who eventually bites and he's on his way.

Jane, meanwhile, is the assistant to the founder of an eco-friendly clothing outfitter, George (Edward Burns, an underrated actor and talented director in my book) with whom she is in love. Her coworker/best friend Casey (Judy Greer) attempts to be Jane's voice of reason, consistently reminding Jane that her love for George is absurd. Enter the conflict: Jane's baby sister Tess (Malin Akerman). While at yet another engagement party, Tess meets George, and a relationship soon follows based on Tess' lies about her personality, told to suit George. At the same party, Kevin tracks down Jane to return her planner and plant the seed of writing his story. George asks Tess to marry him and Jane, after finding out what Kevin really does (unbeknownst to her, she is a big fan of his writing), becomes closer to the "angry marriage-hater." Kevin's exposé on Jane is printed thus ruining their blossoming relationship, she sabotages Tess' engagement only to realize she didn't really love George, and it's all happily wrapped up in the end.

As I said, 27 Dresses is very predicable in places but still a fun viewing. It takes the romantic comedy and grounds it with very real characters and a believable story. Marsden is surprisingly well cast as Kevin and brings a charm to the otherwise unsympathetic character while Akerman pulls off the egocentric ditz in spades. That is, except her confrontation scene with Jane towards the end. Throughout the film, Tess has been a manipulative, self-serving airhead, yet in this scene, she is able to succinctly articulate all of the internal conflict that has been brewing within Jane for the past two decades. Hokey but effective. Greer plays Casey with the right amount of exasperated wit and candor, speaking for the modern woman who doesn't live in a little girl's fantasy world. Most of the potentially sappy moments are undercut with McKenna's sharp writing and attention to expectation. While it won't go down as one of the greatest romantic comedies ever made, it certainly is one of the better entries the genre has seen in a very long time.

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