by Byron Gordon

Created on: May 16, 2008

I first heard about Juno when I read about its popularity at the 2007 Toronto Film Festival. The story, upon first read, about a smart-ass teenager who finds herself pregnant and faced with the challenge of how to handle it, did not impress me. It wasn't a storyline that captivated my imagination or my intellectual curiosity. So I wondered. Why did this film keep receiving adulation from just about every movie reviewer under the sun? Rotten Tomatoes had a multitude of positive reviews with a few negatives ones sprinkled in. I decided I wasn't going to fall for the media circus surrounding this picture and would wait for it to come out on DVD.

Now I have written screenplays before so I believe I can be quite critical from a screenwriter's standpoint given that I know what is involved when crafting a screenplay. Let's first review the movie:

Juno tells the story of a 16 year old girl, sarcastic, smart and a bit too cocky for her own good as she finds out right at the start of the film that she is pregnant after having casual sex with her highschool boyfriend, Paulie Bleeker. Once Juno finds that she's pregnant, she informs her best girlfriend and they discuss what exactly she should do. Juno then breaks the news to her parents. Her parents give her the OK for an abortion ( a tad too cavalier in my opinion). Juno attempts the abortion route but gets cold feet. She then decides to give her baby up for adoption. She places an ad in the local paper and identifies a lovely wealthy couple who want to adopt. Will things go smoothly for Juno? How will she respond once she gives birth?

For starters, this basic plot outline doesn't do much for me. I'm not intrigued by it and my curiosity has not been peaked. If I read the logline of this script it would not be one of my first reads. But let's begin to analyze this picture.

Now I realize that each and every family on this planet is different. Parents are not the same all over when it comes to their emotional reactions. Juno's parents know very well the sharp-tongued verbal antics of their daughter (mother shown is actually step-mother to Juno) so one would take that into consideration. However, the reaction by both parents to Juno's admission of pregnancy is so calculated and without serious emotion that it begs the question, what kinds of parents are these people and would they actually exist in real life or are they just a caricature created by screenwriter Diablo Cody? One has to seriously ask this question because once

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