10 Successful Low Budget Films (That Weren't As Good As You Think)

3. Juno (2007)

The sort of distaff counterpart to Juno was a little movie by the name of Superbad. The reason Superbad worked as one of the best "teen" movies was that, finally, a movie had dialogue that sounded like something an average awkward teenager would really say. Considering Superbad had a license to print money, it would make sense to think that the painful days of every teenage movie being full of characters that were nothing but hyper-witty wish fulfilment vessels were now past. One month later, Juno came out. The greatest trick Diablo ever played was convincing people that she was a talented writer: she somehow won an Academy Award despite every single one of Juno's lines sounds like it was whispered to her from a futureself who spent the last ten years since high school sitting around going "man, if only I said this instead" about every conversation she ever had. The only time there are any sort of interesting moments between two characters are the parts where Juno would interact with the husband-half of the couple who wanted to adopt her baby, and that is only because it sort of teased an outside chance that this was going to turn into Hard Candy 2: Electric Boogaloo. Instead, that character just turns into yet another excuse to make references to other Super Cool Things in lieu of actual character development. Considering the hour and a half before it, the only logical ending to Juno would be the entire cast laying on the ground twitching while frothing at the mouth due to a deadly overdose of irony and smug satisfaction.