Juno

Rated PG-13

Catholic-ometer: 3 of 5

Enjoyability: 2.5 of 5

This movie was an unusual case.  It's a movie about how a young, immature, teenage girl discovers she's pregnant after spontaneous sex with a young, slightly-more-mature, teenage boy, and how she copes with it.  She contemplates abortion at first, but ultimately, chooses adoption instead.  It amazes me that the movie's plot can be, on the surface, so pro-life, and still not be something a good Catholic can really enjoy.

I say "on the surface" because actually watching the movie takes work.  Juno herself is an unpleasant and unresponsible girl, with a decidedly critical and pessimistic view of the world around her, and it shows, because the movie is narrated by her inner monologue.  Still, this alone wouldn't be enough to ruin the film.  If I tried to count all the movie protagonists who start out foolish and irresponsible, and learn some important lesson by the end of the film, which turns their life around, I'd be too busy to make another post for the rest of my life.

The problem is in the specifics.  You've probably heard that this movie contains profanity.  That's a whopping big understatement if I ever heard one.  This may be one of the most vulgar films I've ever seen, and as of right now, it's proof that they'll never give a movie an R rating for cursing alone.  I usually don't mind a little cursing in movies for the sake of realism, but this didn't feel realistic at all.  It felt over-the-top.  Maybe that was intentional.  Maybe they were trying to get a laugh that way.  I don't know.  I just know it didn't make me laugh.  The cover of the DVD claims that it's a comedy, but it didn't get a peep of laughter from me, so I sort of assumed that was a misprint.

This movie, to its credit, tries to tackle all the hard sexual subjects of today; teen pregnancy, abortion, divorce, and so forth, but through it all, there's no real talk of honor or ethics, much less religion, and it seems to arrive at only about half the answers to the questions it poses.

Nobody comes out and says "what you did was wrong."  There's no sense, from any of the characters, that their actions brought about consequences and they should take responsibility for them; just a mass of emotions over things like fingernails, body shape and lust.

This sense of things being unfortunate, but never bad or wrong pervades the whole movie.  When Juno has sex out of wedlock, she's never told it was wrong.  When she decides against abortion, she never expresses that she thought it was wrong.  When the couple who plans to adopt her child decide to get a divorce, once again, that horrible word "wrong" never dares to rear its ugly head.  Even when the husband in that couple... acts unfaithfully, Juno never tells him that he's wrong to do so.  No one does.  Pish-tosh.  It just isn't done.  We don't say nasty words like that at the country club.

Juno herself demonstrates many instances of poor judgment and simple bad morals early in the film, and never really seems to learn her lesson about them later.  In one instance, she expresses inner disgust over her boyfriend's mother being overweight, and in another, makes a comment that sounds almost like a plug for gay adoption.  Bringing these things in, and failing to talk about whether they're wrong or right is simply a cop-out, and honestly, we deserve better.

Ultimately, the strengths of this movie are found in the boyfriend, who, though shy and weak-willed, seems to genuinely care about Juno and want what's best for her, and in Juno herself, who gradually learns to appreciate that kind of love; the kind that involves making sacrifices.  It would be a mistake to say that these are not strengths.  They certainly are.

However, the particular phrasing of the lesson that Juno learns is something like "someone who loves you for who you really are," and this is a humanist moral lesson; not a Catholic one.  Love, by the Catholic definition, has nothing to do with who the person you love is, and everything to do with the person doing the loving.  It's a one-sided decision to do what's best for the other person, regardless of what kind of person they are, or how you may feel about them.

Ultimately, I think that "Juno" might serve well as a ecumenical vehicle to guide wayward souls towards a better means of thinking, and as movies go, it doesn't stink, but if you're already a strong Catholic, don't waste your time on it.