Juno is a 2007 movie. It has hipsters.
Juno is a movie about a young girl, Juno, who has sex with some guy called Paul (he's about as interesting as any character played by Micheal Cera; underspoken and a bit of an A-hole, but not overtly so) and gets pregnant, but can't abort it out of pity for fingernails or something, and puts it up for adoption to attractive people.
40 minutes of Ellen Page wandering from place to place, being a fucking hipster bastard, getting fat and snarking, talking about shitty old horror movies, listening to shitty obscure music, and Micheal Cera not appearing except for one bit where he's stolen her pants or something.
In other words, Ellen Page playing an Ellen Page character. Around this time in her career, she was typecast into a hipster. Even in Hard Candy, her character was a hipster. An evil, corrupt, creepy as hell pedo-murdering maniac, but still a hipster.
In other words: HIPSTERS, THE MOVIE.
And, before we delve into this pile of.. meh, the soundtrack. It's awful. I'm not a music person; I listen to The Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, and Regina Spektor. Oh, and anime openings. Those are, like, the only things I listen to. Maybe I just don't get hipster music.
There's also a good song here: The Kinks, who I sometimes listen to. It's glorious. Oh, yeah, and it's by The Kinks. You know, not the woman whose name is fucking plastered all over the damn soundtrack. You know, Kimya Dawson, that woman who, while being a relatively decent musician, prefers to mutter in bad guises, halfheartedly playing a guitar which turns some genuinely good acting in emotional moments into pure, unmitigated narm [tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Narm]?
I might be sounding overly pissed off at this movie, but I hate hipsters. Everyone hates hipsters, but there's just a special kind of hate that I find in them. Maybe it's because I was scared out of Starbucks by them my first time there. I ran out, clenching my coffee, crying, and afraid I'd been infected.
Now that my prejudice has been cleared up, let's talk about this movie.
[HEADING=2]The Story[/HEADING]
The "story" is Ellen Page being Ellen Page. After being knocked up by Paully(?) Bleaker, the local Nice Jewish Boy with an overbearing mother (originality!) he then decides to become an extra, occasionally providing comic relief and sometimes helping Juno with shit.
So, why the
fuck is he
almost as prominent in the advertisement as Juno. You know, our hipster dickbag who we have the unfortunate opportunity to follow around for an hour and a half?
She takes her third pregnancy test after a cool little animated sequence that probably cost a decent amount of the budget that could have went into licensing a soundtrack that wasn't shit, save 3 or so songs. Yep, she's... defs preggo. Not the exact term used, but it might as well be.
Then she goes home, tries to hang herself with a liquorice rope, then leaves it there for some kids to eat (how does that sound, kids? Days old liquorice hanging from some tree?) and then goes inside, vomits in her stepmother's urn and then calls her friend.
She is pregnant fo' shizz, honest to blog.
I'm going to cry.
In case you could not yet tell, this movie has Totally Radical. Not your average fare, such as the use of words like "dude", "man", "word", and the phrase "I'd hit that", while having no idea how youths speak. It's hipster-speak. It's completely indecipherable, almost as much as Kimya Dawson making noises into a microphone over a soft guitar that this movie considers a soundtrack.
It sucks all seriousness out of all of the scenes, and makes them completely... well, you read that "Narm" article on TV tropes I linked up to right now, didn't you?
And then they find a married couple looking for a willing mother who would like to give their child up for adoption. Simple enough.
Now, this is when the movie goes full on "Ellen Page wanders around, saying funny things, talking about obscure shit the writer and 2 other people knew about, one of whom is dead and the other the creator, before she pushes out her little miracle while yelling a mispelled Thundercats quote" mode, turning completely uninteresting, and leaving any sense behind.
So, it gets hard to talk about, because so many pointless events happen from here to the end. It sounds like the writer was writing aimless fanfiction to understand Juno's character, but they ended up using that because, y'know, writing a story is too hard and costs too much money.
It's funny, fairly intelligent. But it's also full of hipster shit, and while Ellen Page is fucking awesome, she's not awesome here. She's... let's just say that Juno's character gets annoying. Bleaker is also reduced to an extra role, and, despite the fact that he is 1/2 of the child's DNA, and he fathered the damn thing, his view, his voice, and how he's doin' in general, is never touched upon. What the hell? Aren't you going to say something? Your long-term friend and girlfriend is giving your child away to two people you never meet in the story?
Nothing? Honestly? Maybe some of that screen time involving Juno's stepmother calling a nurse a stupid ***** could have went to Bleaker's characterisation? No? Our other protagonist who gets dropped at the bus station in favour of bad music and Ellen Page being funny.
Now, this movie does have funny bits. Emotional bits. Sometimes, the story take a turn, becoming well-written, very intelligent, and it actually becomes something. And then I started enjoying it. I started to like the movie. But then it turns back into Hipsters: Hope You Like Them, and I cry a little on the inside.
You know what, movie, you're doing just fine.
[HEADING=2]Other Stuff[/HEADING]
It's a very visually striking film, taking a high-school-doodles motif, and the opening animation sequence is pretty damn good-looking.
Again, 3 good songs, and a lot of bad ones from a relatively good musician who, sadly, picked her worst songs - mostly the ones that leak literal hipster essence.
Not much else to say. Here's a mediocre movie, it's got Ellen Page in it but there are no pedophiles who torturing. Instead, she comes up with bizarre terms that nobody would ever say in real life that piss you off, and not being very funny.
Hope you enjoy. I suppose.
Juno is a movie about a young girl, Juno, who has sex with some guy called Paul (he's about as interesting as any character played by Micheal Cera; underspoken and a bit of an A-hole, but not overtly so) and gets pregnant, but can't abort it out of pity for fingernails or something, and puts it up for adoption to attractive people.
40 minutes of Ellen Page wandering from place to place, being a fucking hipster bastard, getting fat and snarking, talking about shitty old horror movies, listening to shitty obscure music, and Micheal Cera not appearing except for one bit where he's stolen her pants or something.
In other words, Ellen Page playing an Ellen Page character. Around this time in her career, she was typecast into a hipster. Even in Hard Candy, her character was a hipster. An evil, corrupt, creepy as hell pedo-murdering maniac, but still a hipster.
In other words: HIPSTERS, THE MOVIE.
And, before we delve into this pile of.. meh, the soundtrack. It's awful. I'm not a music person; I listen to The Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, and Regina Spektor. Oh, and anime openings. Those are, like, the only things I listen to. Maybe I just don't get hipster music.
There's also a good song here: The Kinks, who I sometimes listen to. It's glorious. Oh, yeah, and it's by The Kinks. You know, not the woman whose name is fucking plastered all over the damn soundtrack. You know, Kimya Dawson, that woman who, while being a relatively decent musician, prefers to mutter in bad guises, halfheartedly playing a guitar which turns some genuinely good acting in emotional moments into pure, unmitigated narm [tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Narm]?
I might be sounding overly pissed off at this movie, but I hate hipsters. Everyone hates hipsters, but there's just a special kind of hate that I find in them. Maybe it's because I was scared out of Starbucks by them my first time there. I ran out, clenching my coffee, crying, and afraid I'd been infected.
Now that my prejudice has been cleared up, let's talk about this movie.
[HEADING=2]The Story[/HEADING]
The "story" is Ellen Page being Ellen Page. After being knocked up by Paully(?) Bleaker, the local Nice Jewish Boy with an overbearing mother (originality!) he then decides to become an extra, occasionally providing comic relief and sometimes helping Juno with shit.
So, why the
fuck is he
almost as prominent in the advertisement as Juno. You know, our hipster dickbag who we have the unfortunate opportunity to follow around for an hour and a half?
She takes her third pregnancy test after a cool little animated sequence that probably cost a decent amount of the budget that could have went into licensing a soundtrack that wasn't shit, save 3 or so songs. Yep, she's... defs preggo. Not the exact term used, but it might as well be.
Then she goes home, tries to hang herself with a liquorice rope, then leaves it there for some kids to eat (how does that sound, kids? Days old liquorice hanging from some tree?) and then goes inside, vomits in her stepmother's urn and then calls her friend.
She is pregnant fo' shizz, honest to blog.
I'm going to cry.
In case you could not yet tell, this movie has Totally Radical. Not your average fare, such as the use of words like "dude", "man", "word", and the phrase "I'd hit that", while having no idea how youths speak. It's hipster-speak. It's completely indecipherable, almost as much as Kimya Dawson making noises into a microphone over a soft guitar that this movie considers a soundtrack.
It sucks all seriousness out of all of the scenes, and makes them completely... well, you read that "Narm" article on TV tropes I linked up to right now, didn't you?
And then they find a married couple looking for a willing mother who would like to give their child up for adoption. Simple enough.
Now, this is when the movie goes full on "Ellen Page wanders around, saying funny things, talking about obscure shit the writer and 2 other people knew about, one of whom is dead and the other the creator, before she pushes out her little miracle while yelling a mispelled Thundercats quote" mode, turning completely uninteresting, and leaving any sense behind.
So, it gets hard to talk about, because so many pointless events happen from here to the end. It sounds like the writer was writing aimless fanfiction to understand Juno's character, but they ended up using that because, y'know, writing a story is too hard and costs too much money.
It's funny, fairly intelligent. But it's also full of hipster shit, and while Ellen Page is fucking awesome, she's not awesome here. She's... let's just say that Juno's character gets annoying. Bleaker is also reduced to an extra role, and, despite the fact that he is 1/2 of the child's DNA, and he fathered the damn thing, his view, his voice, and how he's doin' in general, is never touched upon. What the hell? Aren't you going to say something? Your long-term friend and girlfriend is giving your child away to two people you never meet in the story?
Nothing? Honestly? Maybe some of that screen time involving Juno's stepmother calling a nurse a stupid ***** could have went to Bleaker's characterisation? No? Our other protagonist who gets dropped at the bus station in favour of bad music and Ellen Page being funny.
Now, this movie does have funny bits. Emotional bits. Sometimes, the story take a turn, becoming well-written, very intelligent, and it actually becomes something. And then I started enjoying it. I started to like the movie. But then it turns back into Hipsters: Hope You Like Them, and I cry a little on the inside.
You know what, movie, you're doing just fine.
[HEADING=2]Other Stuff[/HEADING]
It's a very visually striking film, taking a high-school-doodles motif, and the opening animation sequence is pretty damn good-looking.
Again, 3 good songs, and a lot of bad ones from a relatively good musician who, sadly, picked her worst songs - mostly the ones that leak literal hipster essence.
Not much else to say. Here's a mediocre movie, it's got Ellen Page in it but there are no pedophiles who torturing. Instead, she comes up with bizarre terms that nobody would ever say in real life that piss you off, and not being very funny.
Hope you enjoy. I suppose.