Feb 21, 2008

[Movies] Juno

JunoWhen I first saw the trailer for Juno well before the awards season, already I was pretty excited about this movie. It had a pretty solid story to start with, a relatively unknown cast and a nice vibe to it that had me instantly attracted to the movie. What can I say, I tend to be a sucker for quirky indie movies.

It's a shame that the local film festival held every Christmas season inevitable delays all good December movie releases from the US and we had to wait over a month before Juno was officially released in theaters locally. When we finally got to see it last Saturday, there was no doubt in my mind that it was more than worth the wait.

Juno is the highly creative tale of a 16 year old girl who finds herself pregnant and decides to put the baby up for adoption. After finding an ad in the classified, she finds a couple that she thinks might be best for the baby and from there the story unfolds.

Juno, as played by Ellen Page of X-Men (Kitty Pryde) fame, is an amazing character. She's remarkably well-written and for a 16 year old she's a long stronger, wittier and intelligent than how most teenage girls are portrayed on-screen. The best thing of all is that she's believable, since the plucky young girl is not a new character archetype for Hollywood. Many times in the past they've tried this and it just comes out as canned and somewhat plastic. This time around she's dynamic, funny and interesting and that has to be worth something these days.

Plus Ellen Page's performance was just stunning and I can see why she got the Oscar nomination at such a young age in an independent film. It's hard to think of anyone else pulling this role off as effectively as she did and that definitely reflects well on her abilities as an actress.

The cast is composed of familiar but not necessarily well-known folks other than the couple Mark and Vanessa who are played by Jason Bateman and Jennife Garner respectively. It's nice to note that despite how much relatively "larger" they are as actors, they did not grand stand or attempt to take center stage in this film and there was no question that Juno was at the heart of this story.

The writing all throughout was just stellar - funny, witty but not in an inane or over-the-top manner. At the heart of all this was a relatively more serious message, a tale of how have come to understand relationships and their ability to remain strong in these modern times. It's a story about young love and whether or not it can be true. It's a movie about a girl facing a very real problem and dealing with it in a manner unique to her.

Another key piece of this movie is the music that fills the spaces in-between and also help define Juno and some of the other characters. The soundtrack has that distinct indie feel to it, but not in a cheap or inappropriate manner. I can't picture the film with more mainstream songs and their choice of artists was amazingly apt for the kind of story they were trying to tell.

Overall, this is just an amazingly brilliant movie, a masterpiece of storytelling and a venue to kick off a new career for the young Ellen Page.

3 comments:

  1. Hello Rocky,

    I noticed na nadagdagan na ang mga interesting gay blogs out there. I hope you'll feature some of them in pgb.

    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'll try to get around to it - I've been massively busy these days and even the Geeky Guide has been suffering from fewer updates.

    Kai,

    I am so with you there! Juno is just awesome!

    ReplyDelete