Last night my little brother and I caught a movie at one of our local theaters, the Eden Praire Mall. It was a real heartwarming tale, but there were two things that really distracted me about the movie that kept me away from feeling the raw emotion so many women in the audience felt.
Juno is about a young girl (Ellen Page) named Juno. She is sixteen years ago and has found out that she is pregnant after having sex for the first time with her boyfriend (Michael Cera). She realizes that she can't possibly care for the child herself and she toys with the idea of abortion but can't go through with it. So she turns to adoption and finds a couple Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) and her husband (Jason Bateman).
By the partial cast listing, it's pretty easy to see why I wanted to see this movie. I was very interested in seeing Michael Cera and Jason Bateman in serious roles outside of their type-cast roles they've been in since Arrested Development. To their character, they still were Michael and George Michael, but they acted great in their moments of seriousness. I hope they find more roles like this in the future, so I can see more of their acting ability. ^_^ I'll settle for their hilarious comedic character though..
Tangent: Both have movies coming out, by the way.. Michael Cera will return in Apatow's Year One sometime in 2009, while Michael Cera will support Will Smith in Hancock July 2008.
Anyways, these two nagging distractions really only apply to me. One thing that really pissed me off was this searing pain in my neck I had ever since I woke up in the morning. I mean, it was like someone hammered a nail right into my spine in the base of my neck .. The pain was almost paralyzing. I'm actually quite reliefed that I can move today. That and I was so monsterously sick the past two days.. ugh. but Hurrah.. i'm in better health today!
Unfortunately, the nagging pain was the main emotion I felt which really drew away any overwhelming happiness the vast amount of the female audience felt due to their constant sniffling and "awwww honey, hold me" sentiment.
The other thing that nagged me a bit was their location in the movie. From the beginning, it looked like Juno lived in any normal rural town. The first name drop was given by Michael Cera's character when he mention his friend or brother went to Mankato for college. That was a big flag.. 'Mankato? As in Mankato State in Mankato, MN?'.. hmm..
My suspicions were confirmed with Juno gave the next name drop when she talked about some girl tearing off all her clothes and jumping into the fountain at Ridgedale mall. Bingo.. I knew it. West Suburbs of Minneapolis.. where I grew up. The mission became to figure out exactly where Juno lived in the movie.
Well.. that's where the location kinda falls apart. A couple times in the movie Juno drives out to see the adopting parents who live in a rich suburb entitled Glacial Valley Estates, which is later identified as residing in St. Cloud, an hour and a half away. OK, so if Juno goes to ridgedale often and St. Cloud is an hour and a half away, then she probably lives in Plymout, Maple Grove or whatever cities are in between there.
What screws up this theory is Juno's Step-mom says "why the hell would go the East Jesus out there" when talking about St. Cloud. Ridgedale is in Plymouth which is directly West of Minneapolis and Maple Grove is directly North of St. Cloud. To go to St. Cloud from Ridgedale, you'd take 494 to Maple Grove and continue along I-94 to St. Cloud, which is directly North-West of Maple Grove. There's nothing East Jesus about it.
For St. Cloud to be East anything of Juno's house it would take her around 3 hours to get to Ridgedale, and the scene where Juno just happens to run into Vanessa AT Ridgedale makes absolutely no sense. Well.... nevermind, I guess it could make sense if it were a Satuday or Sunday. I guess North-west-wise Ridgedale is the best mall option.. both Northern malls are crap. well, Northdale is probably remodeled by now, but its difficult to get to and further away than Ridgedale.
Anyways, that was bothering me the whole movie. I'm glad I went to go see this movie with my little brother because if I saw this with anyone in Madison or from school, they would have been constantly annoyed with me talking to myself trying to slooth their location. In fact, the woman sitting next to my little brother kept telling me to shut up with her evil eye.
Later on, you get full view of their high school's name: "Dancing Elk High School", which I'm fairly certain doesn't exist.
Unfortunately, I don't have Internet here so I can't really check up on anything.
Anyways, Juno is fantastic. It's comedy-style has a very Napoleon Dynamite spin, but thank god the characters don't act that way. It's extremely heartwarming, powerful, funny.. It's really great. Definitely check it out.
Thankfully I got their nagging distractions out of the way the first time I saw it, so when I see it again and show it to people I'm not constantly talking during the film.