Supergood
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Ellen Page, Michael Cera: Don’t look now, but I’ve Ban’d my thighs |
In the pregnacomedy Juno, young buck Aman Johal goes running with Michael Cera, who’s just rubbed roll-on deo between his legs so his junk doesn’t chafe, and is filmed in extended shot with his chuddies showing:
Vijay: Did you hear Juno is pregnant?
Paulie: Yeah.
Vijay: Did you hear it’s yours?
Paulie: Yeah.
Vijay: You should totally grow a moustache or something.
Paulie: I can’t.
Of course an Indian male would conflate manhood with growing a caterpillar. Later on, Cera makes plans to crash at Vijay’s parents’ cabin after his high school prom. The desi character, an ambulatory quirk, is treated matter-of-factly. He’s just another young dork on a suburban Minnesota cross-country team, but he’s also given that greatest of gifts in film, a zinger.
The movie is smart but overly precious, the spiritual successor to Knocked Up but not nearly as well-written. It leans heavily on great one-liners, and it nails the soullessness of suburbs, but daubs itself in faux indie warpaint: hand-lettered titles, a one-note emo guitar whine, a welter of pop culture references. The movie stars Jennifer Garner, no indie warhorse; her gaunt jawline and injected lips make her look like Jamie Foxx from In Living Color. And it’s directed by Ivan Reitman’s son (Thank You for Smoking) and produced by John Malkovich. It’s no Napoleon Dynamite. Vote for Pedro, still.
Rainn Wilson is fabulous. Ellen Page has pretty, preternaturally vulnerable eyes and uses words as armor. Olivia Thirlby, who plays her friend Leah, looks like a 20-year-old Eva Mendes. The male leads in this flick are puzzles. Jason Bateman plays another creepy, repressed man-child who never says what he really thinks. He’s like a black hole of emoting: motivations cross the Bateman horizon and are never heard from again. Cera plays such an inarticulate wuss, in real life he’d rarely couple with anyone other than another insecure geek. His casting was some serious wish fulfillment. As the father, played by J.K. Simmons, says:
Mac: Who’s the father?
Juno: It’s… it’s Paulie Bleeker. [Everyone stares…]
Mac: I didn’t think he had it in him.
Leah: I know, right?
The New Yorker liked it:
Michael Cera enters a scene like a soft breeze… When they argue, they can’t conceal their dismay even as they are winging insults at each other. Juno is a coming-of-age movie made with idiosyncratic charm and not a single false note. [Link]
Here’s the trailer:
on Monday, December 17th, 2007, 1:17 pm in Film, Video clips › 
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dude. there’s a much bigger story here. the writer of this flick is an ex stripper, phone sex worker who started blogging under the name diablo cody. her writings were quite the hit and she was contacted to write the screenplay for juno. apparently she even found her mate online.
btw cera is from the same place as russell peters and page i think is a haligonian
Yup, read that.
saw juno friday night.. really thought all the funny parts were in the trailer… le sigh.
-snort- in my days we would rub freshly harvested pig blubber with a piece of rubbery intestine. when the dogs chased us, we’d only go faster. they used to call me bludslinger.
… yea I know that will really go down well with the dewey eyed femmes who’ll be going aawww on your blog at the sensitive musings on aNOTHer coming-o-age movie with emo music. but hey guy, i’m not the one who’s waxing (sic) about cera’s thighs. Totally ruins your game. [Two references. One would be ok. But tWO is muchly shady yaar].
see what i meant. ;-)
all the le sighs are going to blow the snow right out of Bo-stan.
Really chick pea? I mean I wasn’t gonna see the movie cause it’s funny. But you know because I expected Ellen Page and Michael Cera to pump out a good movie. I mean ever seen that show “Arrested Development?” or that movie “Hard Candy?”
I quite liked it. But I also sat in the FIRST row at Kips Bay (ew ew ew), so…
More examples of “not a big deal” desiness are in the original script (which you can see clips of in the special features section of the DVD).
In the “honest to blog?” scene, Juno talks about losing her virginity to Habib, a dude she banged for six months. Leah says that she always thought Habib was weird because he liked “that Japanese porn,” and Juno retorts that hentai is mainstream and an art form.
In the “your baby wants to be born” scene, the character was originally supposed to be named Prashanti Patel.
Brilliant. Prashanti wants your baby to be bornded!
Cody, Rowling and Mamet should look past Patel for other surnames. We’ve got lots.