The highly-acclaimed Juno is up for several awards, among them Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Director, Actress and Writing—the very same categories it occupies as a nominee in the Independent Spirit Awards. The only honor it deserves is one that doesn’t exist: Phoniest Movie of 2007. The script, by Diablo Cody, is almost as horrendous as its writer’s pen name: none of its characters are remotely believable; instead, they’re just quirkiness incarnate. It’s an unholy marriage of the worst of indie-film snarkiness, “Family Guy”-paced reference slinging, and treacle.

Juno (art by Erin Nuzzo)
Juno (art by Erin Nuzzo)

The first third of the movie seems to be a solipsism centered on sixteen-year-old Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page, whose character’s very name is quirky nonsense). The snarky, sharp-tongued teen gets knocked up by Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) and decides to give her baby up to an older couple, Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner). When she meets the surrogate parents, she’s a fount of bizarre, insensitive comments, mostly aimed at Garner’s consummate yuppie, but they might as well have been directed at Margaret Dumont from an old Marx Brothers movie (although the lines would have been far wittier in that); miraculously, Vanessa doesn’t hear or react to a word of Juno’s “zany” antics.

Even worse, Bateman plays an erstwhile grunge rocker, which gives Juno an opportunity to list all of the totally cool music she listens to: a formidable list that includes Patti Smith and The Stooges. The music that’s actually in the movie is neo-folky and somnolent. It reminds me of something Roger Ebert mentioned in his thirtieth anniversary review of The Graduate: the Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack in that film (lauded at the time for being trendy and youthful) now seems “safe”—better suited, therefore, for lackadaisical Benjamin than vampy femme infidel Mrs. Robinson. Juno’s tame score, credited to Mateo Messina, seems more reflective of the eponymous teenager than the musical tastes that Cody feeds her. When Juno exuberantly rolls off her favorite bands, it’s nothing but the filmmakers dropping names in order to pick up some free hipster credibility; the whole movie is artificially cool, and thus, truly, deeply square.

Ironically, the square, “poignant” moments were probably those I liked best, but even the most authentic scene was screwed up by the director, Jason Reitman, whose previous feature, Thank You for Smoking, was a paean to inauthenticity. Vanessa is touching Juno’s baby-swollen gut and talking to her future child, but the scene is set in the middle of a shopping mall. You’d think someone would think it strange to see a thirty-five-year-old woman groping a pregnant sixteen-year-old’s stomach.

And Juno, the “offbeat” teenager who supposedly loves hard music, is as saintly square as the teens on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel; her wardrobe and manner present her as a modern high school punk, but, in temperament, she’s really just an old-fashioned, harmless puck. The angel’s only “sin” is having a single sexual encounter with a boy she loves—a big-hearted dork. (Cera, as the shy, vulnerable Bleeker, is one of the strong points of the movie. His lines aren’t any better written than Page’s, but his sweet, effeminized delivery of them makes the dialogue—if not more believable—more affecting.) Otherwise, she’s in a perfectly loving relationship with a supportive father and step-mother. When she announces her pregnancy to them, they jokingly wish her problem was due to alcohol or drugs, but such things don’t seem to physically exist in this universe. Movies with subject matter like this one’s are often applauded for being more “realistic” or “truthful” than your average Can’t Hardly Wait or Drive Me Crazy, but, despite the pregnancy, I have difficulty remembering the last time I’ve seen kids (or adults) as well-adjusted as these. This might as well be a “very special episode” of “Father Knows Best.”

Juno is sometimes funny—in a Vaudevillian, eye-roller type of way—but it hardly deserves the laudatory talk it has garnered. Reelview.net’s James Berardinelli calls it “the kind of the film where a viewer almost needs to look for a reason to dislike it for it not to work.” Well, I didn’t have to look too far to realize how sloppily plotted this was: key moments of the stories come quickly, illogically and without build-up. For instance, there’s no mention of how Juno is treated as that-girl-who-got-pregnant at her high school (other than a few quick shots of students giving her stomach dirty looks) until it’s suddenly a big deal. Also, Mark, the likable ex-rocker, turns pedophile douchebag awfully quick. Bateman, perhaps wrongly, portrays him through most of the film as a sympathetic never-was whose loneliness draws him to pregnant—but uncorrupted—Juno. But that subplot is thrown an absurd curveball; he becomes so low that there’s no indication that he even plans to help out with raising the baby after divorcing Vanessa at the end.

And while my beef with Juno’s (and the rest of the cast’s) so-called wisecracks may be personal preference, Ellen Page’s performance is hardly internalized; she’s fine with timing, but all the movie does is have her blab on and on—not as a self-defense mechanism, but as an effect of bad, showy writing. (In the actress’s defense, Juno’s dilemma is treated as nothing more important than the usual lovelorn teen-movie girl problems—she wonders if it’s really possible for two people to be happy together forever.) Juno acts more sophisticated than she is, but not in the way real girls her age do; she delivers self-conscious lines that make it sound like she’s a wizened sixty-year-old living it up in a sixteen-year-old’s body. Juno’s skittish friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) seemed more like a real girl of that age and was often funnier to me than the title character.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the reviewers were right and this went on to be the next Little Miss Sunshine, which, despite its sitcom-family foibles, had some genuine characters in original situations—and saved its contrivances for the end. Knocked Up, which, like Juno, was categorized as “realistic” and “hip,” may have actually deserved those labels; it was easy-going and playful and didn’t have to mention the nineteen-seventies punk scene for audience approval.

I don’t dislike Juno because it’s unhip; I dislike that it appeals to viewers’ egos (to that inner plea for hipness inside everybody’s head) using cheap methods like name-dropping and fashionable trappings that are all surface and give little indication of genuine experience, intelligence or sensitivity. There’s a pleasant story here, but it’s buried underneath cancers of “I’m cool!” and “Look at me!” Others seem to react to the nervous barrage of jokes and saccharine moments which come so constantly that they mask how very premeditated or inaccurate they sound. Unfortunately, to me, it’s all spiel and no substance. Juno pretends to be cooler and funnier than it really is; it’s more like a real teenager than the title character it concocts.