JUNO in three acts

I saw Juno a couple weekends back.

The ad campaign in late December really put me off to the idea of seeing it, what with the MTV-meets-Rushmore vibe, but I gave it a spin at the Tower. And as it turns out, it's a nice little picture: female protagonist, more or less avoids melodrama, some fun pokes at Jason Bateman, quirky soundtrack.

But it's not one of the five best-directed films of the year!

For that matter, Jason Reitman, who previously directed the sloppy and aimless Thank you For Smoking, hardly can weave a tale. The guy sucks at structure—I would know, structure's my Achille's heel. And with Juno you'd think structure would be a gimme: The protagonists pregnant—three trimesters, three acts! But no, it wasn't happening.

I missed the opening scene, but the helpful concession staff at Tower told me that Juno gets knocked up in a recliner. Bam, there's your conflict: Juno's pregnant. Act One ends with a spin on the conflict: Juno's going to go through with the pregnancy.

She finds a couple to adopt the baby, but by the end of the second act the adoption's in doubt.

Then out of nowhere, Act Three is resolved by, well, setting up an entirely new conflict (Juno's concern over couples can staying together) and resolving it, all in 40 minutes. Oh, yeah, and the baby finds home, too.

My beef: If the movies going to be about relationships and love, then why bury that conflict until the final act?

This was the same problem Reitman had with Smoking, also an ostensibly simple 1-2-3 story: tobacco lobbyists grows a conscience, loses job, finds new calling. But in that film too Reitman pulled the rug out on the third act and went for the relationship-epiphany angle. Dude, stick to your game plan.

Another quibble with Reitman is his penchant for being a trendsetter. In Juno, he uses purportedly hip teenage dialogue, but it comes off as phony. Then there's Bateman's Mevlins/indie-horror fixation and Juno's Stooges fan shtick, which passes the time but doesn't quite float.

It's on the right track, but needs someone to rein it in and tie the knot.

And then there's the fairytale element. None of Juno feels all that believable: Juno's autonomy, her father's nonchalance. The ho-hum lack of melodrama is nice, but, again, this is a film, so you need at least some tug.

Give me Alexander Payne's Election any day of the week.