<p>Mythmom, I believe you made your point several posts ago. Belaboring your point (aka trying to convince others your way is the right way) is not what this board is about. It’s about expressing opinions/views and I believe you’ve already done that.</p>
<p>Hm. I thought I was responding to a post. If you think you were given the ruler to wrap me on the knuckles to right ahead.</p>
<p>I didn’t see the above post expressing an opinion but making rather global statements.</p>
<p>But ouch! I been properly wrapped. My knuckles do hurt.</p>
<p>It’s not a documentary on the perils of teenage pregnancy. It’s a movie. Maybe it shows how good compassionate parents might act and that fit adoptive parents come in different packages and that what seems perfect may not be.<br>
BTW he did work. He’s a music writer for commercials and such. He just works at home as millions of creative people do. Does Dave Mathews go to an office? Judging by his estate in Virginia I think he does OK.</p>
<p>Wow, mythmom, you’ve been chastised right proper. I have to remember to get acinva’s permission before posting anything.</p>
<p>Except that I didn’t get permission for this post, did I? Oops. Can I get my ruler whack somewhere other than the knuckles, please? My arthritis is acting up today and they are already sore.</p>
<p>Its a movie that cutifies getting pregnant, and I just couldn’t be bothered</p>
<p>wait, didn’t I already say that?</p>
<p>chefmom’s post is much like many reviews I have read</p>
<p>I don’t know, I guess I feel an issue as important as teen pregnancy, in a movie geared toward teens, making money, and after listening to the director on the radio, who doesn’t deny its a “message” movie, I would hope for more of a consideration of the social impact</p>
<p>and from what I heard about the clinic scene- seems there was an agenda from the director</p>
<p>I’m seeing Juno tonight. One of my kids saw it last night. </p>
<p>cgm, I am not sure how you can critique a movie to this degree when you haven’t seen it? </p>
<p>I don’t see why a movie must be politically or morally correct in its message. I mean, lots of movies are about murder or terror. I don’t think the movie’s obligation is to have a “message” but more it gets people thinking (obviously it has generated discussion here for example). As well, it is not a documentary or public service piece that examines all sides of an issue. It is a fictional story.</p>
<p>Juno has a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so at least some critics liked the film.</p>
<p>“and from what I heard about the clinic scene- seems there was an agenda from the director”</p>
<p>You mean he might have a point of view that is different from you and not PC according to the PC police? It seems this a not uncommon amoung young women today.</p>
<p><a href=“http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=abortionyouths23&date=20080123&query=young+women+anti+abortion[/url]”>http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=abortionyouths23&date=20080123&query=young+women+anti+abortion</a></p>
<p>Wait, I’m assuming when you say clinic scene you’re talking about the abortion clinic; is the agenda supposed to be pro-choice or pro-life? I’m only asking because it seemed maybe pro-life-ish to me (only because she didn’t actually get the abortion), but I’ve also heard complaints from people who say it’s too pro-choice-ish. Gosh. I guess you can’t please everyone.</p>
<p>You’re right, corranged, especially people who haven’t even seen the movie! ;)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree with this 100%. Furthermore, I am morally certain I know what the director’s agenda was:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Get the film financed and distributed. Movies that are seen as “pro abortion” = no on this point. So the movie had to be acceptable, at least, to a broad spectrum of the public, pro-life and pro-choice.</p></li>
<li><p>Sell tickets. See above.</p></li>
<li><p>Have a plot. In order to do that, the heroine had to get out of the abortion clinic without leaving her pregnancy behind.</p></li>
<li><p>Present abortion as an option, without offending the pro-lifers too much. So she goes to the abortion clinic, and it isn’t THAT bad, and she leaves in an act of utter irrationality that the movie never bothers to explain (except, if your tendency is to be pro-life, you don’t notice that there’s no real explanation, because you probably assume that you know the explanation). In real life, we know perfectly well that Juno gets the abortion. But that would have been a waste of a cute movie idea.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>For crying out loud! The director is the son of a rich, famous, powerful (left-wing) Hollywood director. He and his father identify themselves as Canadians. He went to Harvard-Westlake and USC film school. The screenwriter is a Philly-area bad-girl type who makes certain everyone knows that she used to work as a stripper. She uses the name “Diablo Cody” professionally. The chance that either of these people was pushing a secret pro-life agenda, as opposed to a pro-ticket-sales agenda, is just about nil.</p>
<p>Does the movie pander to the religious right? Of course it does. It’s hard to imagine a movie like this getting made and distributed without some such pandering. It didn’t pander enough to offend me, although certainly the clinic scene was one of my least favorites.</p>
<p>As for cutifying pregnancy, has everyone forgotten Knocked Up already? This movie is cinema verite by comparison. But let me add that, in real life, pregnancy among the young (not too young!) and healthy is pretty darn cute. (Until the actual birth process begins. The movie doesn’t present that as cute at all.)</p>
<p>Well, I that I think Knocked Up had it beat. The crowning footage was priceless IMO because we don’t get to watch from our position.</p>
<p>I don’t enjoy inside the clinic, but I do enjoy the zany “All babies want to be borned” presentation. I know. I’m evil, taking the content out of the aesthetics of the scene. The moral police as after me right now.</p>
<p>Did not think Knocked Up was interesting at all. Neither expecially funny or clever. Only time I laughed was when the guys learned there already was a site that listed nude scenes in films. I guess they had never heard of Celebrity Skin either.</p>
<p>barrons: I only meant, a little tongue-in-cheek, in that one regard.</p>
<p>Agree with JHS 100%. I actually think that the fact we have people outraged on each end of the spectrum means they did a fairly good job of balancing the subject matter.
And I thought the irrationality of her act - leaving because the receptionist was creepy and people kept drumming their fingers - was rather typically teenager - like refusing to get out of the car at college X because it looks gross.
I also thought, beyond the obvious there is no story if she has the abortion, that it was another piece of her character to want to do something different, unexpected, to experience something different. Didn’t she basically talk (bully) her friend into having sex just to see what it was like? I KNOW I’m over analyzing this pleasant movie now.</p>
<p>Well, I also thought that she left because she was just told by a peer that her unborn baby/fetus has fingernails. I also think that her leaving was because of angst, but perhaps that was my interpretation.</p>
<p>The filmmakers – as dictated by their agenda, see above – let individual viewers choose the rationale for leaving they liked best. They offered a hodge-podge of possibilities: fingernails, not wanting to identify with the receptionist, a desire to be different, a desire to do penance for her mistake, recognizing that she had an opportunity to give a gift to someone else, sheer deus ex machina to save the plot. I can say po-TAY-to and you can say po-TAH-to, and we don’t even have to call the whole thing off.</p>
<p>No baby-no movie–or at least a far different one. No adoptive couple, etc etc.</p>
<p>No “cautionary whale” line.</p>
<p>JHS: I agree. Commercial considerations ruled, and may I say, their calculations were brilliant. Lars and the Real Girl, a more serious movie in many ways, got very little buzz and even less audience. It was never released into wide release. And the trailers made it look really stupid (which it isn’t, if you haven’t seen it.)</p>
<p>I look forward to seeing that if Comcast gets it in PPV.</p>