I usually try to avoid declaring bland platitudes, especially in my movie blog, but something should be said about seeing a movie in the right environment. Ok, here it goes:
PLATITUDE: Seeing a movie in the right environment can really enhance an otherwise mediocre movie.
Take for example the movie Dazed and Confused. Add a few bong-rips and some stoner friends and not only do you have a great movie, you have a great afternoon. Or take Titanic and add a passionate make-out session with your date. That's a damn good date. (Tangent: I remember seeing Jackass: The Movie while in college in a theater filled to capacity with drunk college students who reacted to every stunt Steve-O and crew pulled off with shouts and howling laughter. People were throwing popcorn and running up and down the aisles. In any other movie that behavior would have been unbearable, but paired with the senseless violence on screen it remains one of my favorite movie-going experiences.)
So with that in mind, take me at my word that a theater in Union Square, surrounded by indie rock infected NYU students is the right environment to see Juno, Jason Reitman’s new flick about a mouthy teenage girl and her adventure in pregnancy. I saw multiple angular haircuts in the audience. One chick was wearing huge plastic eyeglass frames with no lenses. These are Juno’s people. They laughed at the so-square-its-hip dialogue (“Wizard”, said in place of “awesome,” was exclaimed more then once) and as soon as geek heartthrob Michael Cera appeared on the screen just about every female in the place began to giggle and sigh longingly.
And that appears to be the filmmakers intent. They want you watch, to giggle, to sigh. The movie is kinda funny at times, kinda serious at other times, but the one constant is it’s sweetness. Ellen Page, who plays Juno, our impregnated main character, is as cute as a button, prancing around her snowy town in assorted hipster regalia and at one point calling up an abortion clinic (“Hi, I’d like to procure a hasty abortion”) on a phone shaped like a hamburger.
I was a bit surprised by how toothless the script was. If you didn’t know better you could easily confuse this with a Miranda July film and even in her melancholic movie Me and You and Everyone We Know, there was that hilarious “poop sex” banter. (“Back and forth, forever” still cracks me up). I was expecting a little more edge and little less whimsy. The combination of director Jason Reitman, whose last film, Thank You For Smoking, contained one of the most gleefully amoral characters in recent memory (Aaron Eckhart as a remorseless tobacco lobbyist), and Diablo Cody, who entered the public consciousness with her book Candy Girl, an autobiography of her days as a stripper, almost seems destined to make a film drenched in sex and antiheroes. Instead we get a movie about a twee high school romance almost derailed by an unplanned pregnancy.
With all that said, I still liked it. Very much so, in fact. Once my attitude re-adjusted from black-comedy curmudgeon to romantic-comedy sap I was open to all of the movie’s charms. J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney, as Juno’s shocked but supportive parents, are hilarious in their roles and surprisingly avoid cliché to come off like genuine, loving parents. And Jennifer Gardner and Jason Bateman as the potential step-parents for Juno’s future spawn are equally enjoyable to watch as a yuppie couple coming to terms with their impending parenthood.
The mostly acoustic soundtrack (lots of Belle and Sebastian and one prominently featured Moldy Peaches song) fits the mood perfectly. Music selection is very important in these types of movies. Just ask The Shins. If it wasn’t for Garden State , their “Band That Will Change Your Life” moniker wouldn’t exist.
Of course, similarities to Knocked Up, this year’s other comedy about young people and unplanned pregnancy, no doubt have to be mentioned and I would mention them here except for, besides the main premise, the two movies aren’t at all alike. Whereas Knocked Up is about man-child Seth Rogan finally realizing he’s an immature goofball and growing up to become a dad, Juno is about a girl who thinks she knows more then the adults, gets pregnant, realizes she doesn’t know squat, and, in realizing this, comes of age, as they say. The only similarity I can see between the two is that they are both very funny.
PLATITUDE: Seeing a movie in the right environment can really enhance an otherwise mediocre movie.
Take for example the movie Dazed and Confused. Add a few bong-rips and some stoner friends and not only do you have a great movie, you have a great afternoon. Or take Titanic and add a passionate make-out session with your date. That's a damn good date. (Tangent: I remember seeing Jackass: The Movie while in college in a theater filled to capacity with drunk college students who reacted to every stunt Steve-O and crew pulled off with shouts and howling laughter. People were throwing popcorn and running up and down the aisles. In any other movie that behavior would have been unbearable, but paired with the senseless violence on screen it remains one of my favorite movie-going experiences.)
So with that in mind, take me at my word that a theater in Union Square, surrounded by indie rock infected NYU students is the right environment to see Juno, Jason Reitman’s new flick about a mouthy teenage girl and her adventure in pregnancy. I saw multiple angular haircuts in the audience. One chick was wearing huge plastic eyeglass frames with no lenses. These are Juno’s people. They laughed at the so-square-its-hip dialogue (“Wizard”, said in place of “awesome,” was exclaimed more then once) and as soon as geek heartthrob Michael Cera appeared on the screen just about every female in the place began to giggle and sigh longingly.
And that appears to be the filmmakers intent. They want you watch, to giggle, to sigh. The movie is kinda funny at times, kinda serious at other times, but the one constant is it’s sweetness. Ellen Page, who plays Juno, our impregnated main character, is as cute as a button, prancing around her snowy town in assorted hipster regalia and at one point calling up an abortion clinic (“Hi, I’d like to procure a hasty abortion”) on a phone shaped like a hamburger.
I was a bit surprised by how toothless the script was. If you didn’t know better you could easily confuse this with a Miranda July film and even in her melancholic movie Me and You and Everyone We Know, there was that hilarious “poop sex” banter. (“Back and forth, forever” still cracks me up). I was expecting a little more edge and little less whimsy. The combination of director Jason Reitman, whose last film, Thank You For Smoking, contained one of the most gleefully amoral characters in recent memory (Aaron Eckhart as a remorseless tobacco lobbyist), and Diablo Cody, who entered the public consciousness with her book Candy Girl, an autobiography of her days as a stripper, almost seems destined to make a film drenched in sex and antiheroes. Instead we get a movie about a twee high school romance almost derailed by an unplanned pregnancy.
With all that said, I still liked it. Very much so, in fact. Once my attitude re-adjusted from black-comedy curmudgeon to romantic-comedy sap I was open to all of the movie’s charms. J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney, as Juno’s shocked but supportive parents, are hilarious in their roles and surprisingly avoid cliché to come off like genuine, loving parents. And Jennifer Gardner and Jason Bateman as the potential step-parents for Juno’s future spawn are equally enjoyable to watch as a yuppie couple coming to terms with their impending parenthood.
The mostly acoustic soundtrack (lots of Belle and Sebastian and one prominently featured Moldy Peaches song) fits the mood perfectly. Music selection is very important in these types of movies. Just ask The Shins. If it wasn’t for Garden State , their “Band That Will Change Your Life” moniker wouldn’t exist.
Of course, similarities to Knocked Up, this year’s other comedy about young people and unplanned pregnancy, no doubt have to be mentioned and I would mention them here except for, besides the main premise, the two movies aren’t at all alike. Whereas Knocked Up is about man-child Seth Rogan finally realizing he’s an immature goofball and growing up to become a dad, Juno is about a girl who thinks she knows more then the adults, gets pregnant, realizes she doesn’t know squat, and, in realizing this, comes of age, as they say. The only similarity I can see between the two is that they are both very funny.
So, yeah, returning to my earlier platitude, seeing a mediocre movie in the right environment can vastly improve that average movie. However, seeing a good movie, like Juno, in the right environment can make that movie great and that movie-going experience one to remember.
