Hollywood and the Unwed Mother - Page 4


Juno was the only Oscar-nominated movie to attract a large and enthusiastic audience, becoming probably the best-loved film of 2007. Its central character is 16-year-old Juno (played by the brilliant Ellen Page), a child of divorce, with a long-gone hippie mother, an unassuming heating and air-conditioning installer father, J. K. (Ladykillers) Simmons, and a sharp-tongued manicurist stepmom, Allison (The West Wing) Janney. Like Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, Juno always considers herself to be the smartest person in the room—and with good reason. She blows off the prom kings and invites her boneless, beardless best friend Paulie (Michael Cera) to join her in an overstuffed chair for sexual experimentation. When she ends up pregnant, she's repulsed by the local abortion clinic and turns for support to her accepting and supportive parents. They're alternately critical, amused, and above all unashamed. Paulie, a sweet and geeky runner with the longest, whitest legs in movie history, offers comfort without control. He's just a child, as are all of us guys until we let a girl teach us how to love a woman.

Juno decides to give up the baby to a handsome, young, infertile couple in the tony suburbs. The adoptive mother Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) has everything she wants in life except a baby, and is determined to be a mother. Her lackadaisical husband, smarmy Mark (Jason Bateman), a Kurt Cobain wannabe, disdains the money he makes composing advertising jingles. He's an obedient, albeit restless, husband to his precise wife, who vexingly tries to beautify everything around her, including her adolescent mate. Desperate for a baby to raise, she moves her husband's toys and dreams into a closet while she prepares the color-coordinated nursery.

Juno begins to hang out with Mark, making music and watching the slasher films of his youth with him. He makes no passes at Juno; in fact, he becomes the child in the play group, and soon decides he doesn't want to be a grown-up at all. He clumsily, insensitively runs out on Juno, her unborn baby, and Vanessa, finding his slasher films far less disturbing than women who want him to be a man.

The movie, written by tattooed, in-your-face, ex-stripper Diablo Cody, rarely stops being sharp and witty, and then only at just the right moments for a few tears and reflections on how raising babies can turn children into adults. Juno calls the abortion clinic and announces, "I want to procure a hasty abortion." She pokes out her "bump," parting the crowd of students on either side, as she strides unbowed down the center of the high school hallway, defiantly ignoring all who stare.

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