'Juno' a great coming-of-age indie comedy
By Robert J Hawkins Monday, April 14, 2008, 04:23 AM EDT
'JUNO'
In the delightfully fresh comedy "Juno" (Fox, 3 1/2 stars), the unexpected is the pregnancy of 16-year-old Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page).
In the quirky romantic comedy "Lars and the Real Girl" (MGM/Fox, 4 stars), the unexpected is Bianca, the new girlfriend of 27-year-old Lars Lindstrom (Ryan Gosling). Bianca is a life-size, hyper-realistic and anatomically correct sex doll with a complete back story (Brazilian-Danish, ex-missionary, nurse training).
Of the two movies, "Juno" is the better known. It has the sizzle-and-fo'shizzle script of first-time writer Diablo Cody and the self-assured stream-of-pop-consciousness of actress Ellen Page delivering her lines. Something about Page as the take-charge little girl seemed to take hold in the hearts of audiences.
Admittedly, creating a comedy about teen pregnancy is no easy feat. So points to Team Juno (lead by director Jason Reitman). They pulled it off.
Juno is a typical 16-year-old - as self-conscious as she is self-assured. Blessed with the ignorance of the young, she isn't overly burdened by second guesses. If she decides on how something is to be, she's fairly confident that it is the right way.
Like, what to do with the baby, having rejected abortion as an option early on.
Juno decides she wants the baby to go to a cool middle-class couple with fringe sensibilities. So, she picks Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner) out of the PennySaver want ads. Really, the PennySaver. That turns out to be only a half-bad decision,
Around Juno are hot-chick best-friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) and a rock-solid if a bit shell-shocked dad, Mac MacGuff (J.K. Simmons) and be-there stepmom Brenda (Allison Janney). Oh, yeah, and eventually the father, Paulie Bleeker (a delightful Michael Cera).
Much has been made of the stylized dialogue - Juno and Leah speak in a supposedly incomprehensible pop-teen patois. Like this telephone exchange between Juno and Leah:
Leah: Yo yo yiggady yo.
Juno MacGuff: I'm at suicide risk.
Leah: Juno?
Juno MacGuff: No, it's Morgan Freeman. Do you have any bones that need collecting?
Leah: Only the one in my pants...
Juno MacGuff: I'm pregnant.
Leah: What? Honest to blog?
Juno MacGuff: Yeah. Yeah, it's Bleekers.
Leah: It's probably just a food baby. Did you have a big lunch?
Juno MacGuff: No, this is not a food baby, all right? I've taken like three pregnancy tests, and I'm fo'shizz up the spout.
Not so difficult, right? Every generation has its language. It is a part of its identity. Think way back, daddy-o, to the Beats and "77 Sunset Strip" with "Kookie" Byrnes: "Baby, you're the ginchiest."
Director Reitman, a self-professed "tonal continuity" freak - if the tone is off, it is cut - describes the dialogue like this in the DVD extras: "It's like hearing jazz for the first time. It's just unusual, has its own cadence and these sentences that are made up of unusual syntax and product placement."
As for writer Diablo Cody, Juno fills a space in her own life: "Fact is, I was never as witty or as quick as Juno as a teenager. She's sort of a hero to me."
One sly reference by Cody - "other people's pain is hysterical" - can well apply to "Lars and the Real Girl."
Lars is definitely a study in a curious sort of pain. He is an affable young man who lives in a small wintry community and yet is painfully isolated. Lars goes to work (something in a cubicle, on a computer) and returns home to his apartment in the garage of the house occupied by his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and his pregnant wife Karin (Emily Mortimer).
Lars is more than painfully shy. It runs deeper. He runs from social situations. The touch of another human almost sears his flesh. He is tongue-tied. And yet, he attends church every Sunday and is unfailingly polite to other congregants.
Life changes for Lars when he announces that a woman has come for an indefinite stay. He met her on the Internet. It is a chaste relationship. He even arranges for his Bianca to stay in a spare bedroom in the main house.
Bianca is a sex doll ordered through the Internet. (It comes from a real place, Real Dolls, in San Marcos, Calif. Not far from where I write this. You can even tour their shop, the cost of which can be applied to your purchase.)
To Lars, Bianca is quite real. More than a few neighbors and friends feel Lars has gone over the edge. Under the guise of treating Bianca for a mysterious illness, the local doctor/psychologist Dagmar Bergman (Patricia Clarkson) begins gently probing Lars' state of mind.
Meanwhile, the townspeople, at the recommendation of Dr. Bergman, begin to treat Bianca as if she were real, too. Bianca gets a "job" a couple days a week as a mannequin in a clothing store; she "volunteers" at the hospital; she even gets elected to the school board.
It is all very "Northern Exposure."
While Lars seems to be emerging from his shell, thanks to his vivacious girlfriend, his co-worker Margo (the very sweet Kelli Garner) must balance the crush she has on Lars with his new realities.
None of this is played for cheap laughs. There is great sadness that informs every behavior of Lars - Gosling is really something to watch as an actor. Tears easily mix with broad smiles.
"You hear that it is a movie about a man who falls in love with a sex doll," says director Craig Gillespie in the DVD extras, "but that's not what it's about. It's about people communicating with each other. It's about coming together, about connecting."
And it is. Every member of the community is forced to rethink their own life and relationships as they try to reconcile their newfound acquaintance, Bianca. In another time and place, Lars would have been judged and ostracized or worse. His village chose to embrace him for who he was.
That unconditional love has enormous healing powers. Just ask Lars.
ALSO THIS WEEK
A few more DVDs fly onto shelves this week, including: "Alien vs. Predator - Requiem" which picks up where "AVP" left off in 2004; the action adventure "In the Name of the King" is based on the "Dungeon Siege" video game and stars Jason Statham, Ray Liotta and a prominent cast; shock comic Sarah Silverman and Jeff Garlin are looking for love and weight loss in "I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With"; Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke are brothers who plan an unlikely heist in the Sidney Lumet-directed "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead."
IT CAME FROM TV
"Alien Nation: Ultimate Movie Collection" (Fox) When the "Alien Nation" sci-fi series signed off, the party kept going. Five feature-length movies were made and they are gathered here together for the first time on DVD.
Tube fare: Everyone's favorite CIA agent "American Dad" returns in patriotic animated glory in Volume 3; the living is always steamy in season four of "Melrose Place"; available almost as it is airing on TV, the feature-length animated film "SpongeBob SquarePants: Pest of the West."
FROM THE VAULTS
"A Passage to India" (Sony, 1984) David Lean took a last swipe at the sweeping epic film - something he defines with "Doctor Zhivago," "Lawrence of Arabia" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai." He died the next year. The colonial time piece stars Judy Davis, Alec Guinness and Victor Banerjee, among others. Peggy Ashcroft picked up a supporting actress Oscar and Maurice Jarre's soundtrack won best original score.
DVD RATINGS
4 stars: Don't miss: rent it/buy it
3 stars: Worth the risk: rent it
2 stars: On the tipping point: if nothing else is available
1 star: Don't bother: wait until it's in the $1 bin
© Copley News Service
