Juno!

This one is a little bit gushy. I guess that means it happens to everyone.

Romantic comedies are strange, amorphous creatures. Unlike other genres, their goodness or badness seems to hinge, at least for me, on how in or out of love one is at the time. This makes them almost impossible to judge objectively if one b) has a soul or a) is a woman. Being in firm possession of both b) and a), I feel obligated to inform my readers that I was in love when I saw Juno. Worse, I am in love with the person I went with to see Juno. Yep, he was sitting right next to me. I know, I know. It’s like saying you saw French Kiss on your third date with your current fiancé. OF COURSE you loved it. God. Get a room. Now that we’re all on the same page, I’ll continue.

I heard some people say that Juno was too talky, too smarty pants, too nobody-talks-like-that. True. No, true. Sure. No one does. Well, except for screenwriter Diablo Cody. I heard her on NPR. But no, yeah, valid. A whole town of people doesn’t talk in three-to-four syllable banter. Except on Gilmore Girls. But let’s not talk about that.

Basically, I don’t care. And no one else does either. Not Ebert, and not the Oscars. Why? Well, because Ellen Page, Jennifer Garner and Michael Cera are real people who we really care about, that’s why. I could give a fuck about the pitter patter dialogue.

We watch movies to see life in its best light. Moving pictures provide a forgiving veneer that makes every love story shattering and every death unforgettable. At least, all movies have this potential. And Juno does it. Juno takes first love, new love, young love, puppy love and reminds us how powerful and real and scary and….enormous it is, just as Shakespeare did in Romeo and Juliet. Yes, I just made that comparison and yes, it is that good. Maybe you need to be sitting next to someone who makes you feel…enormous in order to agree. But hopefully you just need to b) or a).