Yesterday, I went to see
Juno, a movie about a 16-year old pregnant girl. I've been looking forward to the movie because the trailers were absolutely hilarious and intelligent and also because the movie stars Jason Bateman and Michael Cera, who used to star in the criminally-cancelled TV show
Arrested Development in which, when they had a scene together, they could make reading from the phone book sound funny. It turned out, though, that Michael Cera and Jason Bateman didn't have single scene with each other in
Juno. Also, in general, the movie is more quirky funny rather than rib-hurting laugh-out-loud funny. However, the movie is intelligent and engrossing and real... The characters in movies are so often phony and contrived that it's almost shocking to see a movie with people in it who might be real, like people who you might meet in your everyday life. They make mistakes and they don't always know the right things to say and their lives are alternately boring and dramatic and confusing and complex. The characters in
Juno make good and bad decisions, are weird and nonsensical and infuriating, but most of the time they try their best, just like real-life people. And the best thing is that the characters you care about manage to make their way out of a pretty shitty situation and find some happiness in their lives. Even the most clichéd characters, the yuppie couple played by Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman, end up having unexpected depths as the movie progresses. The music in the movie is also wonderful and great. You can listen to some of the songs on the movie's soundtrack at
this site. One of the songs, the Moldy Peaches' "Anyone Else But You", I am so in love with that I think I will make it my bride-and-groom dance song at my (hypothetical) wedding when I marry my (hypothetical) girlfriend who will of course also hypothetically love the Moldy Peaches' "Anyone Else But You"... Er, anyway, most of the songs in the movie are sung by
Kimya Dawson, whom I hadn't heard of before this movie but whose music in this movie I adore. Below is a YouTube video of her song "Loose Lips", which is on the movie's soundtrack:
