finnigan2

Juno is best described as a dramedy where the plot is driven by character development rather than external events. It is fascinating to watch the very gifted Ellen Page as she goes from a very bright but rather typical sixteen year old smart ass to someone who matures into a young adult as she deals with an unwanted pregnancy. The way she can convey a teenage "could care less" sarcasm and then a barely concealed scared vulnerability within the space of one sentence merely by a subtle change of expression, the tone of her voice or the flicker of an eye is worth the price of admission alone. The supporting cast is uniformly excellent and while the dialog is somewhat quirky at times, it only adds to the enjoyment of a movie which constantly surprises your expectations. The best movie of 2007 in so many ways that it's not surprising that this indie film, which cost only about 7 million to make eventually grossed about 150 million at the box office. That many customers (not to mention 90% of the critics) can't be all wrong!

I loved Get Shorty! Clever premise, great acting, good script - so what went wrong with this sequel? My guess is that some no talent, slick-ball Hollywood mogul got put in charge of the production and decided that he would market the film to appeal to the juvenile market, rapper mind set crowd. As a result, Chile Palmer, the ostensible centerpiece of the movie (as he was in Get Shorty) spends the last half of this movie chuckling, applauding and shaking his head in amazement and amusement at the zany antics of a gang of rappers as they sing, dance and kill their way across the silver screen. His centerpiece role is reduced to that of a spectator. Amazingly, the rapper gang of killers blow people away and still end up in the last reel dancing in the aisles and mugging it up for yuks at a rap concert. I could give chapter and verse on the faults of this movie, but what's the use? It was designed to appeal to a certain audience and no amount of analysis is going to convince that audience that they're watching trash. So if you just love rap crap and a plot that doesn't matter, this is a movie that should ignite your passion.

From the very first frame, this piece of cinematic drudge bitch slaps your intelligence. Holes in continuity, card board characters, poor special effects, unexplained gaps in logic, bad dialogue, wooden acting, blatant sponsor advertising; and that's just the first thirty minutes! Overseeing this rambling wreck is Will Smith who looks and acts like he wandered in from a bad rapper movie. He is a sergeant in the police force and we first see him waking up in his room which seems to be in a rat infested slum tenement building. After putting on his clothes, which appear to have been discarded by a homeless street person, Will climbs into his $100,000.+ Audi and goes to work. Huh? For reasons not entirely clear, Will likes to blow away robots with his BIG GUN! His job is hanging by a thread for such actions, but they send him out alone and unsupervised anyway to look into the death of the most influential robot designer in the WHOLE WORLD! And so it goes like this, on and on and on. A waste of money - one star out of 10.