Thursday, January 24, 2008

Juno not bad (ain't great either)

The latest movie I decided to take in was Juno and I liked it overall. The movie will be a classic and will probably be viewed a few billion times mostly repeatedly by the target audience, teenagers. That is not to say older people cannot like the movie, I did like it too. If you have not seen it, in the next few months/years teenagers will say things that will make very little sense to you. It is that kind of movie, one that tweens and teens will quote and re-quote in normal conversation expecting others to get it, think Princess Bride or Napoleon Dynamite or even worse Monte Python. Will Juno have that huge of an effect on pop culture for the next 10-20 years, never say never. It is about a teenage girl who gets pregnant with another teenage boy. She then becomes the "cautionary whale" for the rest of the movie. The film is not serious despite the serious subject, but at the same time I do not consider it to glamorize high school pregnancy. The lasting consequences of the young couples' bad choice is not full explored in the film; leaving me a little uneasy about the message it intended to send. Hopefully the message sent is that getting pregnant before you are old enough is not the end of the world, and you can still have a good life after making a serious mistake. The wrong message to get from the film would be: LOL, I can has high school pregnancy, ticktak?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

First- how did I not know you had a blog? If I didn't know better, I would feel slighted and offended :)

I was wondering if you would see this movie and what your thoughts would be. I agree that the movie made light of the seriousness of teen pregnancy, but I also think it took a stance on what a lot of girls in that situation go through.

There is often an unspoken understanding in society to "take care of it" and I think the movie realistically dealt with that- how she saw her options and took the higher road- no matter how flip she was in the dialog.

I think the emotion in the end- to those teens that actually took it in- conveyed what it realistically is like, to have this spiritual experience and the selflessness that adoption is. The heartache she felt, but that life does go on for her and it isn't the end of the world.

Harley said...

Rebecca loves the line, "That's one doodle that can't be undid, home-skillet."

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