Will you never learn, Jeff? The fact that it's making money isn't proof that it's good, it's proof that it's NOT good.

I think one reason it is doing so well is because it is the opposite of the very dark movies out right now. Great great movies like No Country.., and There Will Be Blood, Sweeney.. even Atonement are on the dark side. This movie offers an alternative to all of that. Bright breezy funny touching movie. By the same token... I don't think it deserves to win an Oscar. People are just choosing to see it because it is not so dark and troubling. But no.. it does not deserve to win an Oscar.

totally agree, jeff. i wouldn't have called it either. smart, sassy, and entertaining: it is.....award winning? perhaps not.

I don't know why this is shocking. It was pretty evident from the sneak screening at Telluride that JUNO was going to be huge. The audience reaction there, the fact that a sneak screening of a comedy was getting all the buzz over the Cannes winner, INTO THE WILD (in spite of Penn's unusually cheery and obliging presence), painted a pretty clear picture of the film's trajectory.

And JUNO isn't succeeding to this level because it's a bad film, Christian, that's just asinine. The film has broad appeal across demographics and it has strong critical support. The film just works, for pretty much everyone except the tiresomely smug-ass, know-it-all hipsters who have to paint their coolness by going against the grain. Whatever.

totally agree, jeff. i wouldn't have called it either. smart, sassy, and entertaining: it is.....award winning? perhaps not.

I don't get the backlash joy.

Yes, Diabo Cody seems rather annoying. But I don't understand success breeding hatred.

"I loved 'Juno' when I saw it at that exclusive, obscure film festival screening months before everyone else saw it but now that it's popular with the masses it's suddenly no longer funny, entertaining, sharp or well-made. It's stupid and over-rated."

It reminds me of high school when people loved indie label bands until they started selling records and suddenly they "sucked".

"I liked Nirvana when they were cool, NOT when they sold out and made 'Nevermind'".

Kim, I said Juno's succeeding because it's bad, not Christian. I'm not saying it's bad the way Norbit is bad, but it's painfully frivolous, soullessly ingratiating, and overly impressed with itself. These are all the hallmarks of crowd-pleasers. Obviously, members of "the crowd" enjoy these characteristics. I don't. The film says nothing challenging, original or remotely insightful. Its sense of characterization and aesthetics makes Napoleon Dynamite -- its obvious precedent in many ways -- look like Citizen Kane. In any case, calling someone a hipster for not enjoying the most shamelessly hipster-inspired movie in recent memory is deeply confused. It's funny that a movie that's ostensibly a celebration of individuality brings out the conformist in its admirers: "it has broad appeal across demographics... if you don't appreciate it like everyone else, you're faking it!"

Whoa down Kim, that was JD.

Please, JD. Please!

Admit it. If you saw "Juno" months before everyone else you'd be telling us about this really cool, hip, funny indie flick you saw.

And who gives a fuck if it does or doesn't say anything "challenging, original or remotely insightful"? It's a MOVIE! I'm not friends with or even know the makers of "Juno" but I'm fairly certain that their goal was not to change the world or shake democracy to the core.

It's like you're saying "I HATE that everybody likes it so much!"

All I know is when I watched it, (in a room full of unwashed, simpleton rabble, no doubt), I had a big grin on my face for the entire running time.
(And I thought "Napolean Dynamite" was lame and not very funny)

I prefer the Godard quote 'when a good movie is successful it's an accident' or however that goes.

Juno is good but lightweight. I mean, the problem that indie directors make is that they all make serious 'expressive' movies when they should realize the big bucks are in the fluffy, 'life's great!' movies like this and Little Miss Sunshine. It's pretty obvious, really.

Yes, but good is good. Your average Emerson, Lake and Palmer album is far deeper, far more complex and more artistically adventurous than "Rocket to Russia" by the Ramones, but guess which one I'm listening to?

"Casablanca" was a crowd-pleasing B-movie pulp with a cast of popular movie stars and it made a ton of money when it came out. But I guess you'd rather watch 1952's "Yorgi of the Ukraine", the stunning seven hour meditation on sadness from acclaimed Kiev-based film stylist Gorgin Anastoyonkov.

"Your average Emerson, Lake and Palmer album is far deeper, far more complex and more artistically adventurous than "Rocket to Russia" by the Ramones"

It is?

Casablanca is neither pulpy, nor a B-movie. It's one of the most perfect studio movies ever made and certainly better than say, your average Haneke movie. I wasn't being sarcastic in my 12:16 post, Walter.

Yes it will hit 100 million, and sell 10 million DVDS worldwide, sell millions of payperviews and tv rights to NBC. And it cost less than 10 million to make, but HAVE NO FEAR News corp will claim Juno is in the red when Ms Cody and Reitman Jr. start asking for profit statements in 2010.

Yes it will hit 100 million, and sell 10 million DVDS worldwide, sell millions of payperviews and tv rights to NBC. And it cost less than 10 million to make, but HAVE NO FEAR News corp will claim Juno is in the red when Ms Cody and Reitman Jr. start asking for profit statements in 2010.

In film school, and I canged schools after the first year so this was not a one-off thing, they referred to Casablanca as "one of the best bad movies ever". Of course they also said that a film had no historical context when judged as a work of art, so they were full of shit. Will obviously see Juno when it comes out in the rube part of Europe, but I am such a cranky young man that the statement that they would try to score hipster points by making fun of Sonic Youth makes me sceptical. But as anyone who has tried knows, making a good, light movie is very difficult. Catch Me If You Can did it so well that it bothered me that Spielberg focused so much on the drama at times, but very rarely is lightweight fare bearable. When they do pull it off it deserves respect, whether or not that is the case with Juno

Not only did Dennis Cozallio *not* like "Juno," he picked it as the year's WORST film! Scroll way down in his year-end wrap-up post. The takedown is well worth reading:

http://sergioleoneifr.blogspot.com/2008/01/slifr-top-11-10-2007-year-in-review.html

"The film just works, for pretty much everyone except the tiresomely smug-ass, know-it-all hipsters who have to paint their coolness by going against the grain. Whatever."

What's getting tiresome now is how those who don't like the movie are now lumped together in a group and accused of being contrarians and hipsters. God forbid some of us don't bow down at the altar of Diablo Cody for giving us such a cinematic masterpiece.

Kim, sometimes some people just think the movie is not very good. This movie has gotten mostly great reviews, but every single time an alternate viewpoint about the movie is presented, there has to be some ulterior motive to their thinking. Personally, there is more talk from those who liked the movie about Cody's back story and her being a woman than the actual movie and script.

If there was a genuine talk about the movie and script, then I think more people would see it as mediocre, smug, unoriginal, sitcom-like and filled with cheap sentiment. The one thought persistent throughout watching this movie was how overly familiar it felt and unearned the emotions were.

I'm not picking on poor Diablo because she is a woman. Sarah Polley wrote and directed a smarter and more emotionally honest film than she did. Is Juno the only movie this year I feel is overrated? No. I would add in American Gangster, I'm Not There and Death Proof as well. I've never seen such defensive positive reviews since most critics equivocated on the crappy Apocalypto to make it seem they weren't biased against Mel Gibson.

Almost certain to crest $100 million ?? Try minimum $150. Most of the first round of theaters to open JUNO saw their box office increase or remain steady in the 2nd week which is almost unheard-of in today's marketplace. The 2nd round of openings last weekend were massive and the film expands into the smaller markets this Friday, who will undoubtedly respond just as strongly to the film.

We're into January releases now. folks. We're not gonna get a lot of Grade A titles to compete with JUNO for a few more weeks at least.

I have news for you, Walter. I DID see Juno months before everyone else (at the Toronto Film Festival in September). I wrote about my hatred of the movie at Hollywood Elsewhere then and was already being attacked by the film's fans then, most of whom hadn't even seen it yet. To be honest, I really don't get this idea that, simply because a) it's a "feel-good" movie or b) everyone else likes it, I'm obligated to also like it. I'm an open-minded guy. I've watched thousands of movies. I loved Little Miss Sunshine, Knocked Up, and Superbad... and even kind of liked Napoleon Dynamite, but I was instantly turned off by Juno. It's a sincere reaction I had four months before the movie was a hit. I don't know why it's so hard to accept that some people genuinely don't like the film.

I don't really care either way about the obsession with Juno. I thought it was well-done, but whatever.

However, I second the notion that Casablanca was a B film at the time. Bogart was making what, 5, 6 films a year? nobody expected Casablanca to be that good when they first started shooting it. It was just another picture at the time.

That being said, it turned out to be one of the best movies of all time. This contrast is pretty well known, and makes the film even more interesting, I think.

You "Juno" haters make me laugh...

While it shouldn't be nominated for best picture, I'm glad Juno is doing well. Any time a movie can make good money without a bunch of studio-injected CGI bullshit, it's a good thing.

Thanks for that news you had for me, JD.

I've no problem with someone if they didn't like "Juno". Fine. And I will concede that in is perhaps being over-rated in many circles. (Best Picture nominee? No.) What baffles me is the sheer delight and revelry some people take in "hating" the film. It's as if you want to picket in front of the theater or assault people leaving the cinema after having seen it.
"...but I liked it. It was cute."
"You ignorant philistine! IT SUCKED!"

And so it's making money. Would you rather the mall crowd see "Alvin and the Chipmunks"?

And yes, "Casablanca" is a great film. It was not a b-movie in the Republic Pictures sense but it was in no way thought of as great art at the time. It was a churned out Warners film with stock Warners actors, (substituting Ingrid Bergman for Alan Hale). It could just as easily been George Raft or Ronald Reagan in the lead.

Juno is a well-done, smart comedy. Better it does well than the hundreds of dumb films out there.

It actually is unconventional in a number of ways, and while the plot is satisfying, it's not predictable, which is almost unheard of in regular Hollywood fare.

On its own terms, it's actually better done than something like No Country For Old Men.

JUNO is a much better-written and funnier film than MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING, but I'm seeing a very similar sort of audience crossover. People I never thought would even consider going to see JUNO are now saying they can't wait. Even people who don't even contemplate going to anything that doesn't star Will Smith, Julia Roberts, Spider-Man or Harry Potter (well, many of them made an exception for ENCHANTED when they heard it was funny). I'm not going to stop any of them: Given the relentless stream of bad news we have to listen to day in and day out, I can certainly understand why something like JUNO, which says that even a life crisis can have a reasonably happy ending, would find an audience.

love it or hate it, it's going to make a ton of loot and will win Oscars for BEST PICTURE, BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY and BEST ACTRESS.