Juno Review

The dialogue is the thing everyone argues about and the criticism is fair for roughly one reel. Cody front loads the invented slang so heavily that the opening plays like a demo tape, and then, having established that Juno performs cleverness as a defence, the script starts taking it away from her. That is a real structural idea, and Elliot Page executes it precisely, letting the jokes thin out as the situation stops being manageable. The film's actual subject turns out to be the adoptive couple, and Jennifer Garner does something remarkable with a character written to be the uptight one, playing a longing so tightly controlled that her scene in the mall becomes the emotional center of the picture.

Jason Bateman is handled less well, a midlife crisis assembled from signifiers. Reitman directs cleanly and lets the songs carry more mood than they can hold. The politics of the pregnancy are avoided rather than addressed, which is a legitimate complaint. But the last twenty minutes are tender and unshowy in a way the opening never suggested was coming.