I've always tried not to talk about Juno too much because there was a lot of focus on Diablo Cody's backstory and her looks to the extent that it felt like some kind of weird sexism to even talk about the movie. (plus, to be fair, the acting was spectacular all around)
But now that her second movie sucks, I feel a bit more comfortable in trying to figure out what the hell was up with Juno? Yeah, the dialogue was crisp, but man did I have problems with that movie.
Jennifer Garner was supposed to be long-suffering and sympathetic, instead she seemed controlling and kind of awful. I kept thinking about how that kid is going to grow up and not be exactly what she wants him to be, and won't that be fun. Her husbands character was just sad and pathetic and the come-on to Juno was painfully unbelievable.
There's more, but I won't go into it, because plot and characters aside, there's one thing that bugged the hell out of me in this movie, and that was it's musical sensibility.
First of all, nice that you keep throwing off punk rock references, but then about half the goddamn movie played like a hipster folk band music video. About the third time we were supposed to listen to some ethereal plunking over a slow pan for no goddamn reason I was pretty much ready to bail.
And then Juno casually tosses off that her fave bands are I think, the Blackhearts and The Stooges. But then 10 minutes later she hasn't heard of Sonic Youth? Oh, that's likely. Plus they pull the Sonic Youth Carpenters cover and then talk about them like they're some band that only makes sad beautiful music unlike the loud, rude Stooges? That's uh, insane. And then, the husbands character, after dissing the founders of punk rock talks about opening for the Melvins? I don't know if you've ever been to a Melvins show, but usually the bands the get to open for them make Sonic Youth sound like goddamn Bert Bacharach.
Oh well, I hope Diablo Cody makes a zillion dollars, because I might get bugged by her, but she's still a million times better than Micheal Bay.
