Lately I’ve been hearing all this love being professed for the indie movie Juno. Been interested in seeing it for quite a while, but just haven’t had the chance to go see it. So with the recent DVD release I thought I’d finally go check it out.

Suffice to say, while cute and endearing, I thought this movie was quite boring. The story, the characters, and even the music I just couldn’t get attached to. It could be cause of my high expectations of this movie. Everyone I talked to said I’d love the movie for one reason or another. But in the end I just came away underwhelmed. I just felt that the movie was trying to hard to be indie. Sort of like a highschool kid following trying to follow the fads, but not quite grasping getting the concept.

The lead character Juno was one of the main problems with the film. I just felt no emotional connection to her. She just didn’t seem genuine. I’m not saying it’s the actress’s fault either. I think she did the best she could with the material she was provided. Honestly the character just didn’t feel real. I can’t really place my finger on what the problem was with her, but I just couldn’t grasp where she was coming from. As the movie progressed, it just felt more and more like they were trying to hard to make her seem indie/hipster. I pretty much lost all interest when her water broke and she said “Thundercats, Ho!” I just shook my head and sighed. Felt way too much like they were trying to pander their supposed “target” audience. It was pretty much the same with all the other characters. The only ones I found myself remotely liking were Jason Bateman’s character and Juno’s father. Actually the father was actually the only one that made me laugh. And it was just once at that. Which brings me to my next point.

Being a comedy-drama, I thought I’d get some good chuckles and memorable moments. But hell, not once did I think “Hey that’s witty.” or “Oh wow. Haha that’s hilarious!” This mainly stems from me not liking the main character since most of the supposed funny moments involved her. Those moments just felt too scripted and not funny at all. I was hoping for a spirit-lifting make-your-day sort of film but instead I was left with a “meh” attitude.

On to my third point, the music. Just wow. Talk about trying way too hard. It just didn’t fit the movie. Again it felt like they were trying to go for the hipster demographic by injecting indie songs into the movie. Sure they’re cute tunes and I actually liked some of them, but they just made me cringe during the movie. If they used them more sparingly I probably wouldn’t feel this way. In the end it just turned out annoying.

So yeah I pretty much didn’t like anything about this movie. In fact the only thing I really liked was the art direction. Cool rotoscope part at the beginning, cute fonts to dictate what seaon it was, and the clothing style was all pretty awesome. I thought this was the only part of the movie that captured the true hipster/indie feel. It wasn’t over the top like everything else which sort of redeemed the movie for me, which in the big picture is kind of sad.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the movie sucked and everyone who liked it is wrong. I can see why they’d like it. It just didn’t appeal to my tastes. Heck if this came out while I was an impressionable highschooler, I may have loved it. But as it is right now, it bored the heck out of me. And I’m also not telling anyone not to go see it. I think you should go and draw your own conclusions about the movie. Also if you want an “indie” movie, go check out the Wes Anderson movies and if you want to see a better film by Jason Reitman (the director) go watch “Thank You for Smoking.” Awesome films. Any that ends my little rant.