10th February 2010, FILM: Juno

Tonight I watched the film Juno on DVD. I had quite a weird and strong reaction to it. This, I think, is because whilst I quite l liked it, I also had some major problems with it. Let me explain. Everything about this film screamed INDIE. It felt like it was a film that had taken the stance of ‘we’ll let the mainstream films have their mainstream audience, but by god are we gonna sew up the indie audience’. And they did. The comic book-style credits, the kooky ‘outsider’ protagonists, the minor key plotline and worst of all, the soundtrack was so on-the-money indie, it was perfect. The soundtrack I think, was my keenest bugbear, comprising of a zillion carefully-chosen tracks, seemingly designed to prove that somebody has good taste in music. For me, a soundtrack should be there to compliment a film. At its best it shouldn’t be noticed, merely adding background colour and texture. With Juno, a new song began virtually as every new scene did and it constantly jarred with me. I was left feeling that the music was there a) to hit their demographic, b) to sell CDs and c) for the CDs to get more people to watch the film. All very cynical. Which is a shame because I thought the film was alright. The lead character started out annoying and then became likeable, in a similar way to the main character in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky, the story was unusual and played out nicely. All enjoyable, in a nice, low effort kinda way. But the chief feeling I was left with post-viewing was a sense of the film being as completely cynical as any big budget Hollywood blockbuster.