Oscar bait. Totatly overrated. Do not get me wrong, Juno was sort of funny and touching, and “different” in a Lost in Translation, Rushmore, Garden State sort of way. But just not worthy of the hype.

J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney rock it like hurricanes, credible as the parents, great comedic timing. Because that is what they do.

Oh and what the fuck? I can suspend disbelief right along with the next person, but I have issues with stupidity in TV shows and movies, to name a few:

• No traffic on 24.
• Everyone always pulls up and parks right in front of big city buildings.
• No one parks in their garages.

Yes the car companies need to get something for their product placement dollars, but come on. Yes you can drive into many a suburban area and see cars in driveways, but not like in the movies, where they are all just lined up. Now put the cars inside where they belong.

I get showing this couples’ high dollar SUVs is a way of letting us know they are monied. They have a magazine perfect McMansion with a 3-car garage. We get it.

So anyway Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman are interesting. At first they are a magazine ad, with the perfect matchy house and the sweater-over-button-down-shirt that only looks good on skinny, perfect people; you get the sense that she is overbearing and he is reserved and cautious but may turn out to be the “cool” parent. Narrator “Rupert”, a 30 year old boy not ready for life as a responsible grown-up. Or at least not the kind of life his wife wants.

Juno herself sucks and Ellen Page deserved the Oscar nod for making me NOT hate her. I wanted to smack her, hit her, shut her the hell up, but not out and out hate. At least, not all the time as I did chuckle on occasion.

She is supposedly this bright, smart, assertive and confident girl (lots of false bravado) but for the sake of pop culture, faux cool wise cracks, who says and does the DUMBEST things. NOT just insensitive and totally inappropriate, but stupid: she does not know that when asked how far along she is, in a conversation about giving up her baby for adoption, the people are asking about the baby.

Happens over and over. Like many teens, she chooses to be naive about something her faux “old soul, world weary self” should know better, like say…when it is convenient for her. But when it’s not, she’s all “I’m a kid.” Actually she sort of is like some of the demanding, bitchy, unholy terror Spawn of Satan teenage girls I’ve heard tell of.

Mostly the dialogue in Juno was weak and obnoxious and filled with lame pop culture references, self referential bullshit and attempts at cool. I.E. if you play in a band and are a total instrument groupie, that is hip and cool. So of course Juno was “different” and “hep” enough to the old coots at the Academy to seem all new and fresh and creative and Oscar worthy. *eyeroll*

Final Snark: Oscar bait, a little humor, and a lot of (misplaced, undeserved) attitude.