Films explore the light side of pregnancy
Teenage pregnancy shouldn’t be funny. But in the movie
”
Juno
”
from Director Jason Reitman it is. The movie is about a cynical
teenage girl who has sex with a boy on the track team just because
she is bored. Or at least that’s her story, and she’s sticking to
it.
Juno (Ellen Page) marches to a different beat and tries very
hard for most of the movie to act like she doesn’t care about much.
She might have good reason. Her mother abandoned her when she was a
tot, moved to a reservation and started a new family without her.
Juno lives with her father, Mac MacGuff (J.K. Simmons), a
stepmother Bren (Allison Janey) and a toddler half-sister named
Liberty Bell.
Films explore the light side of pregnancy
Teenage pregnancy shouldn’t be funny. But in the movie “Juno” from Director Jason Reitman it is. The movie is about a cynical teenage girl who has sex with a boy on the track team just because she is bored. Or at least that’s her story, and she’s sticking to it.
Juno (Ellen Page) marches to a different beat and tries very hard for most of the movie to act like she doesn’t care about much. She might have good reason. Her mother abandoned her when she was a tot, moved to a reservation and started a new family without her. Juno lives with her father, Mac MacGuff (J.K. Simmons), a stepmother Bren (Allison Janey) and a toddler half-sister named Liberty Bell.
Reitman is best known for the satirical telling of “Thank You For Smoking,” a tale of a man who lobbies for the tobacco industry and has no qualms about it. So one might have expected a satirical story about adolescence or American family life out of “Juno.” This movie, however, is much more earnest.
Juno confesses her unwanted pregnancy to her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) first. At first, expecting it to be some wild prank, Leah doesn’t believe it. But eventually the truth sinks in. After Juno decides not to have an abortion, largely because fetuses have fingernails, she and Leah search for adoptive parents in the local Penny Saver. They find a suburban family in Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner).
Juno tells Bleek (Michael Cera) about the pregnancy and Cera reacts pretty much the way most 16-year-old boys would probably react in this situation. He blinks, swallows, and then runs away. Juno assures him she already has a plan worked out. Of course, he is on the track team and he was headed out for practice when Juno stopped him.
By the time Juno tells her parents about the pregnancy, she has figured out all the steps. Her father and stepmother aren’t shocked that she is in trouble – they just expected it to be expulsion or drugs. Though they offer to be supportive, her father says, “I thought you were a girl who knew when to say when.”
It is the first time in the movie that Juno’s stoic façade crumbles a bit.
Juno quickly bonds with Mark Loring, the prospective adoptive father. They share the same taste in music and in movies. Vanessa is a harder nut to crack for Juno, and Jennifer Garner does a great job of playing the seemingly neurotic adoptive mother-to-be.
But first impressions and looks can be deceiving. Juno isn’t as unmovable as she pretends; her parents aren’t as uncaring as she’d like people to believe; and the potential adoptive parents may not have it together anymore than Juno does.
In the end the movie has very emotional moments and plenty of laughs, and as with life, it has a bittersweet conclusion.
Saved
Several years ago writers Brian Dannelly and Michael Urban had another take on teenage pregnancy. The 2004 independent film “Saved” went largely unnoticed when it first hit theaters. But since then it has become a bit of a cult classic. This movie certainly is a satire and it takes a swipe at religion.
Mary (Jena Malone) attends a Christian high school and has ultra-religious friends. Everything seems to be going well for her. Her best friend is Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore), the most popular girl in school. Her boyfriend is the most popular boy, Dean (Chad Faust). Then she discovers Dean is gay. Mary has a vision in which God tells her she should offer Dean her virginity to turn him straight. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work and by the time Dean is sent by his parents to a place meant to “straighten” him out, Mary discovers she is pregnant.
Hilary Faye drops Mary as though she has leprosy as soon as she discovers the pregnancy, and soon all the popular kids turn on her. She is left with Cassandra (Eva Amurri), a Jewish girl who is at the school because she got kicked out of all the private schools in the area, and Roland (Macaulay Culkin), Hilary Faye’s disabled brother.
Mary’s mother, Lillian (Mary-Louise Parker), is overwhelmed with her own issues so all it takes for the girl to hide her pregnancy is an oversized sweatshirt.
The best acting in the movie comes from supporting actors Culkin and Moore who play their roles to the extreme. Moore’s Hilary Faye is the picture of a televangelist’s wife-to-be and Caulking is great as the bitter, left-out brother.
The movie highlights the hypocrisy that can sometimes overwhelm the devoted as the seemingly perfect ones in the movie turn out to be much less pure than Mary. But more than that, it offers plenty of laughs as Mary searches for acceptance and Dean decides being gay is all right by him.
