essay

1. Jessica Grundy.
Juno is a Canadian-American comedy drama that first appeared in the cinemas in 2007. The director
for this film was Jason Reitman who was also famous for directing other films such as Thank you for
smoking in 2005, up in the air in 2009 and young adult in 2011. Juno is about a 16 year old school girl
called Juno MacGuff, played by Ellen Page, who finds out she is pregnant to school friend and long-
time admirer Paulie Bleeker, played by Michael Cera. Being so young she realises the big
responsibility she will now have and initially considers an abortion.
However, her visit wasn’t as she thought it would be when she is alienated by the staff’s
authoritarian and bureaucratic attitudes and is offended when one of them calls her sexually active.
This is a term which she feels demeans the highly emotional event which got her pregnant. All of this
makes her change her mind about abortion and instead she decides to put the unborn baby up for
adoption. With help from her friend Leah, played by Olivia Thirlby, They look through local
newspapers in order to find a willing couple who will take good care of the baby. Throughout their
search they come across a wealthy married couple who have doted on the thought of having
children, called Mark and Vanessa Loring, played by Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner. Juno and
her father Mac, played by J.K.Simmons, travel to Mark and Vanessa’s home where they agree to a
closed adoption. When we first meet the wealthy couple, Mark and Vanessa, we see them as a
strong loved up married couple who would be great with children and would grow up old as a big
happy family, but however when Juno gets closer to the couple she realises Mark and Vanessa are
both very different such as Mark has a room for all of things such as guitars and music which
Vanessa moved as she claimed was junk. It is also very evident that Vanessa has high standards as
she’s the wealthy one who has a good paying job, but we don’t find out what occupation she has,
whereas, we do find out Mark has a low paid job making jingles for adverts.
After a while, when the pregnancy was progressing Juno struggles with her emotions for Paulie
Bleeker, who clearly loves her too. She continues to hide her true feelings towards Paulie, but
however she is devastated to find out he has asked another girl to prom, with anger and hurt she
confronts him. This is when he tells her it was at her wish to ask the girl to prom and to keep their
distance even though he didn’t want to and that she had broken his heart. Not long before her baby
is due, Juno again visits Mark when he hits her with the revelation that he isn’t ready to be a father
and that he no longer loves Vanessa anymore and that he wishes to divorce her. Vanessa and Mark
both come to an agreement to divorce.
Juno finally accepts that she loves Paulie so she finally tells him and his next actions make it clear he
feels the same way. Not long after Juno goes into labour, but she still decides to give Vanessa the
child as it is all she has ever wanted and Mark doesn’t wish to have anything to do with it as he
would like to do more things before he settles down with a child. However, Paulie is unaware that
she has gone into labour and had a baby boy because she deliberately didn’t tell him as she didn’t
want to put him off on his big race. Furthermore, he figures it out when he sees she isn’t in the
audience and makes his way to the hospital where they both agreed not see the baby as he comforts
Juno why she sadly cries. However Vanessa claims the baby boy as her own like she’s always wanted,
but as a single adoptive mother. The film ends with Paulie and Juno sat outside Paulie’s house both
singing and playing a guitar.

2. Before the film Juno was released the director Jason Reitman wanted to give the film a PG certificate
however, the BBFC refused and claimed because of the content it deserved a 12A certificate instead.
I believe this is because there were sexual content references, even though you could not see any
sexual scenes the following shots shown implied what was going on. Another like this was when the
camera focused on Paulie Bleekers running shorts as they were very short and was shown for the
pleasure of the female target audience.
Another reason why I believe Juno wasn’t given a PG certificate was because the film featured
imitable behaviour such as unprotected sex at a young age, teen pregnancy, aborting unborn
children and giving children up for adoption. These following events are easy for a young child to
copy and think is the correct behaviour.
Furthermore, another reason why I believe Juno deserved a 12A certificate is because featured in
the film was strong language even though the language featured was not direct but expressed her
emotions it could still have been seen as imitable behaviour because the children watching may
think it is correct behaviour.
The last reason why I think the film Juno was given a 12A certificate instead of a PG is because in one
of the scenes we see a small 10 second clip of a gory, old horror movie called The Wizard Of Gore
which has an age restriction rate of 18. In this scene we see 16 year old Juno and mark, a middle
aged man watching the film. This could also be seen as imitable behaviour because young children
may want to watch the horror movie which is suggested very scary as it has such a high age
restriction and also younger viewers may not like and be scared of the images shown.
When researching I didn’t find any similar films to Juno by the same director Jason Reitman,
however I did find some similar films around the same time as Juno such as Knocked up which is
about a hardworking woman who finds out she is pregnant to a lazy partygoer, throughout this
romantic comedy we watch the male character grow up and cope with becoming a father. We also
watch the male protagonist transform into a good role model for his unborn child.