Juno - PASS

*Spoilers, of course. 

Ellen Page once said in an Entertainment Weekly interview that one of the reasons Juno was so outrageously successful was due to the fact that the character of Juno MacGuff is the Holden Caulfield of our generation: "Girls haven't had that sort of character before. We don't have our Catcher in the Rye." 

And it's absolutely true. No matter how much hipster babble comes out of her mouth, Juno is smart, snarky and strangely liberated by a rather life-affecting situation. She does what she wants. She deals with the consequences. She finds foster parents for her unborn child. She barfs blue slushie into her stepmother's urn. She spouts off  ridiculously clever and obscure retorts that have been labeled as both genius writing and complete hipster nonsense. Most of all, she has a mind of her own. What a nice change of pace. 

Juno's supporting females, though a little overshadowed by Juno herself, are also lovingly written. Leah (Olivia Thirlby), Juno's best friend, is earnestly sweet and manages to chat with Juno about something other than the opposite sex, along with loyally sticking by her side through her pregnancy. Bren (Allison Janney), Juno's stepmother, is also rather entertaining and gets one of the best scenes in the movie: at an ultrasound appointment, the technician makes some offhand remarks about how a baby born to a teenage mother grows up in a "poisonous environment." Bren verbally backhands her in response, sticking up for her stepdaughter with a certain parental wit. It's a good moment in the movie--a moment of reality.

And it has need of more realistic moments. Juno is by no means the perfect feminist-friendly movie for any adolescent girl. I very clearly recall walking out of the theater with some friends to have one of them inform me, "Oh my God, this movie makes me want to have a baby now!" No. I would like to remind everyone who watches Juno and has had this thought cross their mind that no amount of witty dialogue can save you from the possible emotional devastation of an unwanted pregnancy. This is a movie, and one that does a rather obvious job of eliminating obstacles from the waddling path of pregnant Juno. Her stepmother and father accept her pregnancy immediately. She finds parents willing to take the baby without a hitch. The only time Juno seems to be stressed out by her condition is during a trip to an abortion clinic where she decides to keep the baby (the well-known "fingernails" scene). She has the baby, gives it away, cries a bit, and the movie ends with her singing the praises of boyfriend Paulie Bleeker (the ever-adorable Michael Cera). 

This flaw weakens the movie---who's world is this, anyway? It's certainly not mine, where girls drop out--or are forced out--of high school by things much worse than the stares of their classmates. Juno seems to be focused on keeping everything about itself young-at-heart: Juno's parents even slip into her cheeky hipster backlash lingo, and this overbearing youthfulness manifests itself into the would-be adoptive father of Juno's baby, Mark Loring (Jason Bateman). Mark makes his living as a commercial composer and sustains himself on old memories of his long-gone 90's grunge band, something that connects both him and Juno from the very start. Eventually, Mark confesses to Juno that he's dropping both his wife Vanessa (a fantastic Jennifer Garner), and his sold-out suburban existence. 

It's another dose of reality and seriousness that the movie really needs: the father with cold feet. The two adults argue in front of Juno, with the baby-obsessed Vanessa cutting Mark down to size: "If I have to wait for you to become Kurt Cobain, I'll never be a mother." This is another great scene: Vanessa isn't just an obsessive baby-monger mother wannabe, she's a real and sincere woman with real and sincere wishes for her life. This isn't even touching on Juno and Mark's relationship--often labeled a little creepy by movie viewers, accented by Juno calling Mark at school and an uncomfortable moment of the two closely dancing to Mott the Hoople just before Mark drops the bomb. 

At any rate, these few moments of "adult" reality aid the movie in it's credibility as a female story, though Juno does its best to remain as young-at-heart as possible. Plus, hopefully the emergence of female antihero Juno will pave the way for additional movies featuring well-written ladies. And with multiple conversations happening between women about something other than men (including a lovely exchange between Juno and Vanessa at the local mall), Juno passes the Bechdel test with flying colors.