Trailer: Juno
Apple - Trailers - Juno - Trailer
Okay, so this is pretty much a dream cast for any film: Ellen Page (aka the daughter from Regenesis; Kitty Pryde); Michael Cera; Allison Janney; Jason Bateman; JK Simmons (J Jonah Jameson; the brutal NAzi dude from Oz); and Dwight Schrute.
Great cast, right? I mean, sure it could have Bruce Campbell or Allison Hannigan or Geoffrey Combs or one of the Gyllenhaal's (I'm ot picky) but still, fantastic cast.
But then it's YET ANOTHER film about a single girl getting pregnant and deciding to not have an abortion. How many of these films do we really need? Are they just, in the end, anti-choice propaganda?
Comments
well, i suppose its true that the great american abortion comedy has yet to be written (though ep 104 of the sarah silverman program and ep 102 of it's always sunny... come awfully close). Perhaps there is simply more humor in keeping an unexpected pregnancy than getting an abortion.
I have seen an advance screening of juno and they do deal with the option of abortion pretty fairly. It is my favorite movie of the year, brilliantly written, quirky and funny and emotional. i cried.
I agree knocked up dodged the issue pretty poorly, and though i didn't care for their mealy-mouthed excuses about wanting to get to the funny, the last thing that movie needed was another 20 minute digression from the plot.
i'm a huge fan of abortion too, but ultimately i don't think that conservatives are winning when great writers and actors make movies that support their ideals, but that we all win when great writers and actors make great, funny movies about difficult decisions that often don't get made by these kinds of people.
Posted by: quarterempty | November 9, 2007 06:15 PM
Probably we should defer to quarterempty -- who has actually seen the film (I'm almost positive that Mojo, like me, is basing his analysis on the trailer alone) -- but just to pick a side: It seems to me that choosing to continue pouring resources into an embryo is still a choice (as opposed to an anti-choice). It sorta bums me out that the public discourse on abortion has boiled down to either a) having an abortion or b) having a baby -- and that doing one or the other implicitly puts you on one side or the other.
I think the reason abortion is the road less travelled in these movies is because these are movies that leverage and explore community and connectedness, and abortion is highly isolating -- both in that it is done in solitary, and that it is generally later concealed. Live birth, on the other hand, is just the opposite. I imagine that, when the day comes that the father stands b the mother's side during the abortion, and they then go home to send out 150 Abortion Announcements, then we'll see abortion as the chosen trajectory in more heartwarming comedies.
Finally, the trailer totally makes this look like Amy Benfer's biography. I fully support this new trend of biopics-about-unfamous-people.
Posted by: dave-o | November 9, 2007 09:43 PM
The great American abortion comedy is, of course, Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
-A-
Posted by: Alan | November 10, 2007 02:02 PM