I apologize in advance for Reubening the thread, but i want to address something barndog said in the Ebert thread:
barndog wrote: The main character in Juno reminded me a lot of the main character in Ghost World - this wise beyond her years high school student who falls for an older man.
But she
doesn't fall for the older man--he falls for her. In fact, it's established early on that she has no idea what's really going on in this interaction between her and Jason Bateman's character. The first time she comes home from taking the ultrasound over to their house, her stepmom warns her that "you don't go hang out with a married man when the wife's not home--trust me." Of course, Juno thinks she's crazy and can't possibly conceive that an older, married man would fall for her, so she ignores the advice because Juno is Smarter Than Everyone Else. Of course, she's not, and when Jason Bateman tells her he's leaving his wife, she flips out at him. I really didn't get the impression that she was falling for him.
The comparison to Enid in
Ghost World is valid, but i think that (ironically, considering what i said earlier about movies not always having to be based in the real world) Juno's character is actually more well-developed and believable than Enid's is. The
Ghost World story, in the movie anyway (been awhile since i read the comic), doesn't try very hard to establish that all Enid's bravado is just that--bravado. In
Juno, however, i constantly got the impression that she's a confused teenager that doesn't know shit. Hell, she even tells her dad "i don't know what kind of girl i am." Enid would never have told her clueless milquetoast dad that (an aside--JK Simmons as Juno's dad was fucking stellar).
But i think the biggest clue to Juno's complete lack of actual confidence or wiseness comes when she confesses to Paulie how much she loves him at the end of the movie. She very pointedly states that he's "so incredibly cool without even trying"--she admires that because she's trying
so hard to be cool and she keeps fucking up. Of course, he also says that he tries really hard, but that's because most kids are at that age. And of course, that's why they connect. Because they're both confused stupid teenagers that don't know anything about life yet.
I've been thinking a lot about this film almost nonstop since i saw it, but even more when i found out that someone hated it, because that was initially inconceivable to me.