The tale of the cautionary whale (aka why Juno is one of the best films I have seen in AGES!)

It's a sad fact of life, but the older you get, the less you are impressed with things - especially films. It's not that they get worse, it's just that you have a greater sphere of knowledge to compare things to. Sure, you still get the odd cracker, but somehow they're just not quite as good as ones that you have already seen. When I was 15 and discovered the films of Cameron Crowe for the first time, or when I was 19 and found Kevin Smith, then it was an exhilirating adrenaline rush of discovering a whole new world - and there's lots of it to discover and somehow you can't quite figure out why you haven't found this stuff before. It's like finding a band for the first time and then delving into their back catalogue and finding all those hidden treasures. Often what you find in there is just as mediocre as the things you will come to lament in your 'old age', but because it is fresh and new, it makes it more exciting, because it's like you are the first pioneer who discovered this, and no-one can take that away from you.

As you get older though, the discovery of great films or music seems to get less and less regular as the world gets smaller and is filled with more and more mediocrity. It's not because there are more mediocre things being produced though (although one could argue the case that these days there is a lot of bland crap coming out of Hollywood), but because you are seeing the same themes trotted out again and again and again. The shelves of your local HMV or Blockbuster are filled with a million identi-kit movies none of which you want to endure or you have endured a dozen times before. However, without mediocrity you do not come to appreciate the gems that every now and again float your way through the flotsam and jetsam of modern movie world. Just as finding that rare gem was so exhilerating as a youngster, so finding a truly great film after months, even years of mediocrity can be just such a rewarding experience as finding that movie gem for the very first. And so it was, that watching Juno for the second time tonight, I cannot help but think that this is genuinely one of the best films I have seen in years.

On paper it shouldn't be the kind of film I like. It's about teenage girls for a start, a subject I was scared of when I was a teenage boy, let alone now I am a nearly 30 year old man-child. But it's about a pregnant one at that! It's also touchingly emotional, and genuinely sweet, which should be causing my testosterone to rise up in my loins and make me change the channel over to watch Euro 2008, instead I just want to sit here and see what happens again to the annoying pregnant brat, while I find myself quoting lines along even at this early stage!

It would be easy to pin the reason for the movie's general fantastic-ness on the Oscar winning script (and quite rightly it won), however I think the main reason for it's general greatness has to be the cast and the brilliant job Jaons 'son of Ivan' Reitman has done in getting them to be complete characters, not caricatures. Whether it is the brilliantly annoying, yet somehow highly sympathetic Ellen Page as Juno, or the cooler-than-thou prescence of Arrested Development's Jason Bateman and the brilliantly awkward Michale Cera it's a cast that is cool enough to elevate this above the average teenage pregancy comedy, but not make it too self-indulgent and unwatchasble. It also has CJ from the West Wing in it which is always going to make it good in my book! However for me it is Jennifer Garner as Vanessa, who's controlled desperation steals the show for me and gives the film a real emotional heart that separates it from the rest. At the end of the day, Juno is a supporting character for the story of Vanessa's journey to get the child she always wanted, while having to trust an irksome high schooler and and even more deadbeat husband along the way. And what's even better is that the film toys with trite cliche, but steers the perfect course that touches on it just enough, but never getting sucked in and destroyed on the rocks on schmaltz!

In many ways, watching Juno is like discovering those John Hughes or Kevin Smith films. I certainly can't think of a film I loved this much, since I saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off when I was kid or even Clerks when I was at uni. When I found them, maybe I was too young to appreciate them, however they set the high watermark for what I regard as genuinely great films. Now, although I'm probably too old (and the wrong gender) to worship Juno McDuff in the same that I idolised Ferris when I was in my teens, and that is probably why I get more out of the older characters than I do the main stars. However I have a feeling that this will end up being a film I will watch again and again over the years, and I hope that it brings as much enjoyment in the future as it does right now.

Perhaps the film is summed up perfectly at the end when Juno turns to Bleaker and tells him, "You're like... the coolest person I've ever met and you don't even have to try." And that is Juno. The irony being that Paulie replies by saying he tries really hard, and just as he tried so hard to be cool and impress her, you can tell that this has been a labour of love for those involved and it is time and effort well spent, because this is definitely the coolest film I have seen in a long, long time.