Juno Film Analysis

Academy award winner for best original screenplay, Jason Reitman’s film Juno hit the big screens in 2007. Starring Ellen Page as the pregnant sixteen year old, Michael Cera as her nerdy best friend who impregnated her, Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner as the couple who wants to adopt Juno’s baby. In this classic film, Reitman delivers a message that challenges the idea of a traditional family and also how your choices affect everyone around you. Through the use of indie rock music, funny and relatable characters, and quirky settings, we get a coming of age story as we go on a journey alongside Juno through her unplanned pregnancy. Wanting to experiment, Juno and Paulie decide to have sex but it’s unprotected. Juno ends up getting pregnant

Juno is lower middle class, and lives in a home with her father, his second wife, and her half-sister. The use of a warm color palette always surrounds Juno, her apparel, and her home. The warm light that fills her home signifies real love and happiness. Vanessa and Mark live in a higher scale neighborhood, with their color palette being very cool and crisp white. Since their home is always shown in a cool white washed light, lit from outside, this signifies that there could be a flaw in the idea of a perfect family. “All I Want Is You” by Barry Louis is the theme song for the film. This song sets the tone perfectly for a romantic comedy along with the rest of the soundtrack that is filled with quirky love songs. The use of diegetic sound happens often as to bring us back into the story. This includes a dog barking to snap Juno back into reality, the sound of a bell ringing in a convenient store. The film uses a lot of voice overs. This includes the opening flashback scene and in the abortion

Vanessa is too uptight and too obsessed with the idea of having a child. Mark is into rock music like Juno and they connect well since Mark is laid back. Mark gets comfortable enough with Juno to tell her that he wants to divorce Vanessa. Although Juno wanted the child to go to a perfect family, she starts to realize that’s not very easy to come by. In the end, Vanessa ends up raising the child as a single mother. Since we see two different broken families, it’s easily assessable that it’s not common to have the perfect traditional family. Nontraditional families can be just as happy, if not even more. Caring, loving, and supporting one another doesn’t mean it has to come from the perfect idea of a family. A strong sense of love is apparent towards the end of the film. Juno comes to the realization that she’s in love with Paulie. Although Vanessa ends up single, she ends up with the baby which is exactly what she wanted. Juno does a fabulous job of capturing the viewer’s hearts and making the audience sympathize with the female leading role. With the respect Paulie has for Juno, the sense of love that beams off Vanessa and Juno both, Juno’s entire pregnancy journey is fun to watch. With it’s romantic indie soundtrack, warm color palette, and relatable characters how could this not be a classic film for all to