Juno

Three cheers for Juno, quite possibly the best movie I've seen all of 2007. You're going to ask me the typical question, "What's it about?" Glad you asked...

It's about a 16 year old, named Juno (Ellen Page), dealing with pregnancy. Gulp ______________. There, that long underscore is there to stomach that heavy statement stated prior. Ironically I'd consider the flick a comedy. I don't know how the now Minnesota native writer, Diablo Cody, did it, but she pulled it off brilliantly. Polarity between the vulgarities of the situation and the brutal honesty that Juno had to face forced a strange, comedic tension that left me continuously sitting forward in my chair.

Before I go into how Cody masterfully orchestrated such an interesting comedy I want to lay the artistic foundation of the movie. Now I will say that Cody's multiple references to places in Minnesota (Ridgedale, St. Cloud, etc. and even Minnesota license plates) really created a slight bias of enjoyment. As an art form, though, I enjoyed how Cody and director, Jason Reitman, created the setting. It seemed as each trimester was a different season that Juno was experiencing. It started in the fall where life was a noticeable change to the cold. Enter the second trimester of winter where relationships with the ones you think were congruently fluid in the beginning turned to a frail icicle awaiting just the slightest nudge from the frigid wind that’s anticipating how to destroy everything. Like most movies, though, there has to be new life and healing that the spring season/third trimester graciously bore.

On to the comic polarity...
The diction is innocently vulgar, much like the Minnesota nice dialect is came primarily from Juno and her boy next door buddy that got her pregnant (Michael Cerra). Mix that with some bluntness from her father (J.K. Simmons) and you got yourself some things to laugh about.

The second aspect deals honestly about the ills (as Juno's step mom questioned, "You barfed that blue slushy in my urn that I bought out in Stillwater?"), repercussions of teenage pregnancy walking down the hall as if she's swimming upstream as a sea of acne clad good for nothing youth gawk at the site of the growth coming from her midsection, and the beauty of giving life—which almost put this grown man to shed perspirations from his hazel eyes.

Look it up. Sometimes its fun and troublesome playing with two magnets that are flipped so they can't ever connect. Life bears is own pain and tears at times. Maybe with a dash of humor and honesty we can understand that there's life and rest beyond bitter circumstances. I know Juno did.