The theater's empty during the day

So over at the aforementioned terribly smart and pretty Probably Awkward, owned and operated by the terribly smart and pretty HT (who, contrary to popular opinion, is not two depressed upstate NY lesbians), has been nice enough to pretty up and post some stuff I wrote about Julie Taymor's "Across the Universe", which is the current title holder for Worst Movie I Saw Last Year and didn't manage to block out. You can read about it here.

And for over here, a brief bit on “Juno”, if only to dispel LB’s belief that I love it.

Yes, I like the soundtrack. Kimya Dawson does the cute thing for me better than a whole lot of folks and her presence here almost helped me glaze over a lot of the problems I had with this movie.

First off, something LB pointed out, there’s the standard trope of “character equals quirk”. Both of the central characters are introduced by their odd consumption habits, complete with quirky brand choices: Juno drinks Sunny D (later blue Big Gulps, although we never see a 7-11), George Michael (sorry, he’s always going to be George Michael to me) eats orange Tic-Tacs. Through the coolness of their “uncool” consumption, we know that these kids are outsiders, which is good because the movie never gives us enough of a wide-view of the social structure in town to establish this in any way organic to the story. Better film makers have used a quirk as a jumping off point for character development, but “Juno” uses quirks as a substitute for personality and, eventually, a plot device to reconcile the movie’s two central characters.

The problem of coolness persists. Everyone is just so nonchalant and the only character who shows any kind of emotion reaction to the pregnancy, the skeletal Jennifer Garner, is ridiculed throughout the film for her feelings, although she’s ultimately necessary to save everyone involved from the burden this baby would become. The baby, it seems, lucks out by seamlessly exiting the film’s world of low class, bad home decorating and emotional numbness by entering the caring and well-painted world of Garner’s single parent home. In short, everyone will be fine as long as there are still a few barren female up and comers with ticking biological clocks and inherent maternal instincts. Or at least a few books on the subject.

What bothers me even more is that this type of film is now what constitutes an “indie hit”. Just like last year’s “Little Miss Sunshine”, “Juno” seems to have won a place in people’s hearts. Some people anyway. This despite the fact the film is largely derivative, coming off like Wes Anderson-lite, as well as the fact it provides not just a tacit but an explicit endorsement of anti-abortion sentiments. The physical realities of the young girl’s pregnancy are never addressed. The pregnancy is little more than an inconvenience, and even that is due more to issues of appearance than anything else, but the fact the fetus has fingernails is compelling enough to override all other pragmatic concerns.

Weren’t the major studios supposed to have us covered in the feel-good department? Weren’t independent films supposed to be a little less…safe? While I wait for “There Will Be Blood” and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” to show up at Ithaca’s independent theaters, wait for the more adventurous programming at Cornell Cinema to start up again and wonder why “Juno” needs to be showing on two out of five screens (a third one is showing “Across the Universe”) , I’ll be thinking not about why the indie theaters feel the need to keep this on screens, but why movies of this type seem to draw the biggest audiences. Of course, I paid my eight fifty, so what the hell do I know?