What's That ? Time for a Sub-Par Movie Review, You Say ?

Went and saw Juno last night. Had a fine dinner beforehand, and even better company. But I’m not here to gossip. I’m here to bore your arse with movie-blabbering!

Juno’s a charming little film, and I can see why people have warmed to it to the degree they have. I can also see why it’s now starting to experience a bit of a backlash, because as time goes on it’s becoming the independent darling juggernaut that Little Miss Sunshine became last year. People then go in with inflated expectations, find instead a modest film told sweetly and with a little bit of a wink, and then grouse about how it wasn’t what they thought it’d be.

But that’s not to detract from the film itself, with the alchemy of its success owed to two major ingredients; Ellen Page and Diablo Cody.

I haven’t seen Hard Candy, the psychological thriller that introduced Ellen Page to the world. But I did think she was one of the few highlights of X-Men 3, with her portrayal of Kitty Pryde as vulnerable as it was fierce, but overall highly intelligent.

All of this isn’t to detract, however, from the work of Diablo Cody, the screenwriter. This was evidently a very personal story for Cody, and it’s one that’s launched her into the public eye in the way few writers ever manage to achieve.

But the exciting thing about her success is that it seems this generation has found its own John Hughes. I think, for the most part, my generation of high school kids went without the kind of mouthpiece that Hughes was for kids in the ‘80s.

We had Kevin Williamson give it a shot, but then people kind of realised his thing wasn’t so much intelligent writing as intelligently skewering other people’s writing, and whenever he strayed too far from subverting the work of others it tended to fall on its face.

Maybe Joss Whedon could potentially qualify, but I get the feeling that his work was too focused on genre television (and you also have to take into account that the Buffy kids were only in high school for 3 of their 7 seasons).

In any case, it now stands that Diablo Cody is poised to do the whole “voice of a generation” thing, and kudos to her. She’s a smart writer, giving her characters dialogue that doesn’t condescend to either the actors or the audience, and is willing to take her characters to difficult places so that we can see them at their most human.

Her next script is to be directed by Karyn Kusama, who broke out in 2000 with Girlfight and then got her arse handed to her in 2005 with Aeon Flux. Given that Cody’s script has been described as “Buffy meets Heathers”, I think it could potentially be a match made in Heaven, and prove that Diablo Cody is truly a talent to be reckoned with.

Plus, it helps that she’s totally hot.