Juno No

Juno, this year's indie film darling, died in labor for me.

The comedy should have been a slam dunk given it's pedigree, but even less than last year's dark horse Little Miss Sunshine, I found I couldn't not line up with the adoring masses.

The film suffers from two major problems. The first is the finished product, which just doesn't play well. Let's start with the talent. Don't get me wrong, they're all fine actors, but rather than playing characters in the film, they're just cast as rehashed composites, and it doesn't work. Michael Cera has already played the shy, awkward type. Jennifer Garner has perfected the look of puckered consternation. Jason Bateman proved he has everyman coolness. Put everything together and it doesn't flow. It's like an all star team - having the top players doesn't mean they will perform well with that combination.

Director Jason Reitman hardly inspires them as he did his actors in Thank You for Smoking, but then again the material was far superior. And for that you can thank Diablo Cody, aka Brook Busey-Hunt. No matter what you call yourself, you're just an ex-stripper who lapdanced your script into the right hands. And to top it all off, the film has an utterly unlistenable, obnoxious soundtrack by The Moldy Peaches, y'know, for indie cred. If you don't hate them for their folk-pop, this picture should do the trick.

The other, bigger issue for Juno is that it tries too hard to be hip and is completely unrealistic. It's like living in an Urban Outfitters sponsored universe, where the cool is manufactured and marketed for the audience to blindly buy and not question. Hamburger phone? Striped shirt? Vintage hoodies? Sorry, we noticed your coolness was unnaturally perfect in it's composition.

And how about teenage Juno, who talks like 35 year old New Yorker from the East Village, which strangely shocks no one. She wanks about a music scene a decade before she was born and asks for hard liquor with disgusting cockiness - and not a single person ever reacts to the contrary. In real life, somebody would have bitch slapped her silly for acting like a pretentious twat. And where exactly in reality do Juno's parents live, where they barely flinch when she decides keep her baby - yes, another unlikely situation. Plus the quaint charmingness Juno's crush on a married man is played with takes all the real life intensity and depth out of it. But hey, Juno can do no wrong, so why think there's anything odd about it?

All that just adds up to one unlikable movie. Heathers was able to pull off dark and edgy, but Juno, you're not even close.