Is ‘Juno’ irresponsible? You decide

When Bob Glatzer, my wife Mary Pat Treuthart and I sat down Wednesday morning to record our radio show, “Movies 101,” which we do for Spokane Public Radio, we looked forward to talking about “Juno.”

Well, at least I did. And my enthusiasm grew as our discussion progressed and I realized that my cohosts loved “Juno” as much as I did.

It wasn’t until Thursday afternoon, though, that I realized something: We discussed the whole movie without once commenting on the movie’s basic plot point: that the title character, Juno MacGuff ( Ellen Page ), is a 16-year-old girl who, in her first sexual experience, has gotten pregnant.

Oh, we passed on the fact of this. But none of us judged the movie, much less the character that Page plays, because of it.

The question has come up since then, though: Is “Juno” irresponsible for not making a bigger point of the character’s having unprotected sex, especially when the sex results in an unintended pregnancy?

Speaking for myself, I didn’t think the movie needed to point this out. It’s not as if Juno emerges unscathed from the experience. The whole film is based on what she is forced to endure: the embarrassment she feels when she tells family and friends, the critical looks/comments that school and/health clinic administrators toss in her direction, the decision she has to make re. abortion or delivering the child and giving it up for adoption, the physical discomfort and assorted emotional shifts that come on her like waves on the seashore.

That she endures all of this with her sense of humor intact, and that she ends up doing the right thing not just for herself but for the baby, doesn’t lessen the impact of what her one night of unthinking has caused.

No, “Juno” doesn’t devolve into message-making. It doesn’t – spoiler alert! – end with her committing suicide, having a miscarriage or dying in childbirth. But it doesn’t have to. Screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman have too much regard for their audience’s intelligence to take such easy outs. The message of “Juno,” such as it is, exists right there for all to see.

But I’d like to hear what others think. I imagine that there are those out there who hate everything this film has to say. There likely are others who either think the movie approves of young unmarried girls getting pregnant or who, worse, don’t notice anything but the gags.

The jury weighing the various arguments of this case has, as they used to say about Elvis, left the building.