For Your Consideration: Michael Cera in Juno

With the awards season now upon us, I'm finding myself... indifferent. Let just get this outta the way: 2005 was a fluke. Brokeback Mountain made me much more involved in the Awards hype than I usually am. I pay attention to it, I do, and I watch the shows every year, but the things I like hardly ever dovetail with what those goobers drool over, and it just leads to too much anguish, getting myself too involved. See: 2005. Or don't, if it still makes you queasy like it does me.

Anyway, I think I might do a bunch of these types of posts. "These types of posts" being ones in which I highlight performances or direction or art design or costumes of Best Boy Grips or whatever I feel like from the previous 12 months that I think deserve recognition but (and here's what makes these posts special!) don't seem to have a holy shot in hell at getting much, if any, of it. Because I defy the establishment, see? I'm like the Sid Vicious of bloggers. Seriously. You have no idea. Who are you to judge me?

Ahem. So I saw "Critical Darling, Fall 2007 Edition" Juno last evening and my reaction seems to have followed the base critical consensus - that it's a wobbly little thing for the first 30 minutes or so, but once it hits it's stride it's a lovely little thing all the same. I did have two caveats about the movie: First off, the overly precious soundtrack was overdone to the point of annoyance. Way too much cutesy balladeering overlaying everything. It worked wonderfully in the final scene, though.

And secondly, and perhaps a little more controversially... listen: I really, really like Ellen Page. She's a fire-cracker, that one, and immensely talented to boot. I hope she gets her expected Best Actress nod, because I'd rather her name fill in the blank instead of a handful of people I like considerably less that could take it from her. But here she was handed a good chunk of clever in the place of character - I'm looking at you, Miss Sells-Herself-Well Diablo Cody - and, as hard as Ellen Page sold it, and the magic she worked with it, there was still something missing. For me. The boyfriend and I were discussing it and we came to this conclusion: Page had the character that was over-written, and the people who came off the best in the movie from my standpoint were the one's that were dealing with under-written characters. Where Cody's paw-prints weren't all over their every hamburger-phoned sigh. We're talking Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner (and let me just tell y'all - I rediscovered my love for Jennifer Garner again last night. She was WONDERFUL.) and... sigh... Michael Cera.

I was not an Arrested Development watcher (Stop yelling at me!), but after the one-two punch of watching Superbad on Wednesday and Juno last night, I'm of the mind at this moment that he's aces. There wasn't a moment when he was on-screen in Juno that felt anything less than totally genuine. When he and Page were together the movie just clicked - their scenes were absolutely perfect. It was like the movie took a moment to breathe in Cera's presence - his awkward half-, no, quarter-grins, his fumbled sweetness - yeah, if you can't tell, I just about think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread now.

All the praise for the movie's gonna go to Ellen Page - and like I said, I like her a lot, so it's okay - but for my money the real magic-worker in Juno, the one who gets this spastic thing working in the end - is Michael Cera. I'd like to live in a world where he got a Supporting Actor nod. That'd be wizard.
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