D'you know?

My mom is going to love the movie Juno. Lion just took me to it as a surprise (as in I was forced to cover my eyes until we were actually inside the theater so I didn't even know what we were seeing). It totally rocked. Well, it mostly rocked. My mom is going to love it, I believe in part because she is a frequent deliverer of teen mom babies. Or at least it felt that way when I was in high school. I'm positive that she called me up to inform me (in a stern tone) of the types of unwanted struggles faced by the accidental mother every single time a pregnant teenager came within 1000 feet of her. This, and the relentless encouragement of birth control use, led her to the fear that such well hammered-in advice may have turned me gay. She swears it was a passing fear.

In any case, as attendee to the health and humor many a predicament laden high schooler, I'm positive she would love it. Plus it's set in Minnesota--though filmed way too much in Vancouver. Ellen Page is snappy and hilarious and fab. Imdb tells me that Kate Winslet is her favorite actress, a fact that I approve of completely. I hope this means she's going to make period movies that I can obsess over with my dad. And, on top of that, she's apparently making a lesbian werewolf move. Or at least there are "metaphorical" werewolves. Allison Janney totally rocks my party in this movie, as ever. And it's a non-tragic story about teenage pregnancy.

Here's what sucks: the women's health clinic is junky and they really really don't deal with abortion as an issue. It felt to me like they had decided to make this movie about an indie kind of girl who finds adoptive parents for her child, but didn't ever decide exactly why she was having the child in the first place. The make it sound both vaguely altruistic (she suggests she'll give it to "a couple of lesbos") and as though she's personifying her fetus (freaking out about its fingernails). Anyway, they really gloss over it. It's not horrible, but it's there. And the clinic scenario really reinforces the concept that women's health clinics are primarily abortion providers and that they aren't places that care thoughtfully for their patients. I think it's a pretty dangerous stereotype to reinforce in the current political climate is all.

Anyway, that pesky issue aside, it is a great movie as a movie, and does provide a pretty refreshing view of the teen pregnancy idea. It also does a pretty good job of staying away from calling Page a slut. Or, at least it makes you mad at the idea that other kids in school are probably calling her a skank. And it gets mad props for making fun of the term "sexually active." Also it made Lion and I cry. And want babies in that weird stereotypical lesbian way.