Alvin & The Chipmunks > Juno
Just thought I’d pop up again for a quick entry. I feel kinda bad about not updating more often, but then again it’s not like anyone cares.
So… Laura and I were at the mall last night, just bumming around, and figured we’d see a movie. There isn’t much exciting cinematic fare playing at the moment, but we had both expressed a modicum of interest in seeing Juno, so we decided to catch that.
Should’ve known better.
Warning sign #1: It has the kid from Superbad (Michael Cera, he was also the kid on Arrested Development). Superbad sucked. Everything Judd Apatow has done since Freaks And Geeks (the epitome of awesomeness) sucks. I hate how he’s trying to be the new John Hughes. That Michael Cera kid is annoying and relies on his spaced-out, blank-faced expression and pre-pubescent cracking voice instead of any visible acting talent.
Warning sign #2: the TV spot for Juno relied upon the most cliched, unoriginal movie marketing concept ever, namely (bad pun, I’m sorry) a rapid-fire montage of characters from the movie saying the main character’s name. “Juno. Juno! Juno? Juuuno…” It’s not clever. It’s not funny. It’s not even original.
So we went in to see it. The theatre was packed. I guess because Juno is this year’s “little indie that could” everyone is going to see it so they can rave about it on their MySpace pages and prove just how trendy they are.
We only lasted fifteen minutes before we decided to walk out and sneak into another show. Right from the get-go the movie was intolerable. The opening titles had that oh-so-2000s faux-indie trope of the rotoscoped (wiki it up if you’re not an animation aficionado) main character walking through a notebook/sketch cartoony world while some crappy 2000s iPod rock plays over the credits. The movie looked like a MySpace page layout.
The main character (Juno, of course) was like some mish-mash of Napoleon Dynamite and Rory Gilmore from The Gilmore Girls. She finds out she’s pregnant, but this doesn’t shift her disaffected, hip demeanour too much. I think she actually said something like ‘I’m pregnant fo shizz’, in an ‘I’m gonna use Ebonics trendy-ironically’ way.
By that time it was all just too much, so we grabbed our coats and walked out. Lucky for us, Alvin & The Chipmunks was just about to start in the adjacent theatre, so we ducked in there and got to watch Jason Lee and some CG chipmunks. A far better way to spend nine bucks and a couple of hours than that faux-indie Fox Searchlight crap.
I’m done. Don’t see Juno.
Wow. I would have probably suffered as well; I was still curious about the movie until now, but since you’ve broken it down, I will take heed of Warning Sign 1.5: Jason Bateman.
I saw the movie tonight. In the first 10 minutes I felt like tearing my eyeballs out and shoving them in my ears. They way Juno talked was extremely frustrating, but after they introduced the other characters she pretty much stopped her stupid “this-is-how-teenagers-talk” mumbo jumbo. I ended up enjoying the movie. I haven’t seen Superbad or anything else with Michael Cera in it, so I’m not over his kind of acting yet. So, all in all, I liked it.
After thinking about it for a while, I realise that I liked it because I could relate to some of the characters. I know what it’s like to be pregnant and 16.
Hey Robin, thanks for the comment. I thought nobody read my blog anymore.
I actually heard in a review a few days later that it was worth sticking past the overly self-conscious first 15 minutes of the movie, so maybe I’ll check it out on DVD.
Oh, did you see King of Kong yet? It’s fucking awesome.
You ripped that movie a new one as only you can. XD
I’ll see Chipmunks if only to see the the Chipmunk Adventure song that was played over the end credits that you spoke of.