IS Juno an Oscar winner in the making?

Sure, the feelgood hit of the winter tapping into the laugh riot that is teenage pregnancy is sweet, and funny, like the likes of Ghost World and Napoleon Dynamite are sweet and funny, but I’m not sure what is has that is supposed to make it a cut above those kind of first-class contemporaries...

I’ve actually found myself agreeing with the teeny minority of reviewers who dare to say that Juno is a bit too cool for school. Ellen Page holds it all together beautifully, I love Michael Cera a little bit more each day, and West Wing’s Alison Janney is a bit of a scene-stealer.

I don’t know if it’s the heavyweight concepts of teen sex and adoption and what-not – Hollywood loves a bit of the old pro-life-ing, after all – that have flung it into the realm of possible best picture winner, but I don’t get it. All that seems little more than a hook to hang a load of hipper-than-thou dialogue. Throughout, its need to blare out those supercool credentials is less convincing, more cringe-inducing (THE MELVINS! SUSPIRIA! A 16-year-old girl arguing with a grown man that 1977 was the best year for music on record! THE MELVINS AGAIN!). Never mind the “smells like soup” insult which only comes some ten years after exactly the same gag in So I Married an Axe Murderer (don't get me started on that one...).

In fact, I haven’t been this perturbed by what is supposed to be a witty, edgy slacker comedy since I was scarred for life by the abomination that was Clerks 2. Alright, Juno is not that bad by any stretch (very little in life is), but writer Diablo Cody should have been reined in a bit. Instead, for some unknown reason, she’s being treated like a veritable Oscar Wilde.

But does it deserve the big prize? Common sense, a quick look at Wikipedia, and a screening of No Country For Old Men tells us the answer is probably no. In recent years, best picture winners The Departed, Crash and Million Dollar Baby all go to show that the Oscar panel aren’t really looking for a good laugh when they weigh these things up. I’m not sure what it is that made Juno a worthy contender, unless the Quirky Indie has become a bit of a token entry in an affirmative action sort of way (Little Miss Sunshine and Sideways both being nominated in recent years). But it would be kind of good to see a film with the line “it makes his junk smell like pie” take the gong. Maybe.

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