I am not anti-Juno. I liked Juno. I liked it quite a bit. And when it came time for people to debate its intrinsic value I kept my mouth shut on the subject. I honestly didn’t feel strongly about it either way. To me it was just okay, and not worthy of its numerous Oscar noms but not bad enough to really complain. Today I saw the film that should have filled its place. The little indie drama/comedy which should have taken all of Juno’s accolades away no questions asked. A film which, had I seen it before the creation of last year’s top ten list, the place of Paris Je Taime would have been called into question. This film is Rocket Science and while it is not about teen pregnancy its character could just as easily have inhabited the same world as Juno, except, of course, only better. And more importantly than that, it is a million times funnier.
The story is of Hal Hefner (Reece Thomas), a young man with a suturing problem, whom through the influence of a certain young beauty, Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick,) decides to join the debate team and take the place of a the fallen hero of the debate team. The fallen hero’s name is Ben Weskelbaum (Nichols D’Agosto) and after one crucial screw up he gives up and does something very dramatic. He completely drops out of school.
Hal’s home life is not much better as his parents have recently separated and his mom is seeing someone new. Many people make mention of the fact that the new boyfriend is a Korean-American and that the characterizations of him and his dim witted son are somewhat negative. They attribute this to racism. These people have no life and are in some ways helping to make the race fight continue and that is simply fuel for the fires of racism. The characters are simply not prefect, like all the other flawed characters in this film. It would be the same as showing a black or gay villain and automatically presuming racism or homophobia on the part of the film maker. Sometimes films are racist or homophobic. This one simply isn’t.
Now that that little defense thing is over allow me to continue to praise this film. Diablo Cody may now be the proud owner of a bright little golden man, but the talent that oozes from the screenplay, written by Jeffery Blitz (also the director of the film,) is something Diablo Cody, talented as she may be, could never come close to, at least not yet. Forgive the run-on sentence there.
Also let’s talk about the acting. In fact the acting on the part of Kendrick won her an Independent Spirit Award nomination. I have no doubt of why. Her character is neither evil nor good, and I mean that in the best way possible. She has many layers and with each scene you see her in you learn something new. The main actor, Reece Thomas is quite good too. However, I must submit the majority of my praise to the young actor who plays Ben. He has film presence that is both devilishly charismatic and also painfully shallow. He, I predict, will one day be a bona fide movie star.
And then there’s the direction of the film by Jeffery Blitz. Blitz before directed the Oscar nominated documentary Spellbound. Spellbound, like Rocket Science, is about children attempting to live up to impossible ideals and the disappointment that this ideology will ultimately yield. Both of the films are mini-masterpieces in their own way and deserve to be seen. What I like most about Rocket Science is how it is funny without sacrificing emotion and how honest it is, without sacrificing on style. That previous sentence describes the antithesis of what Juno turned out to be.
Allow me to reiterate upon closing that I don’t wish to join the Juno wars. In fact those wars have been fought and now, I presume, we are talking of history. However, I mention Juno because so many others did. Of course Roger Ebert compared the film to Election and Clueless and decided that this film belonged beside those films as zeniths of the teen “coming of age” film genre. And while this is not an original concept I agree with him. Of course he did go on to crown Juno the best film of 2007, proving that even great critics like Ebert get it wrong from time to time.
If you don’t mind, forgive any grammatical errors or word omissions from this entry. I have written the first 15 pages of a paper and by now words are all just running together. However, just so that I could spread the word about this film I just had to go ahead and write this blog entry. So go rent this film and think about how, even though I was sleepy and weary I wrote this blog just for you. Unless of course you hate the movie. In which case, blame Ebert. He liked it before me you know.
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