Bayside resident Mark Metcalf, co-founder of Libby Montana restaurant in Mequon, is an actor who has worked in movies, TV and on the stage. He is best known for his work in "Animal House," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Seinfeld."

In addition to his work on screen, Metcalf is involved with the Milwaukee International Film Festival, First Stage Children's Theater and a number of other projects.

He also finds time to write about movies for OnMilwaukee.com. In this installment of the Screening Room, Metcalf takes a look at "Juno," which comes out on DVD today.

JUNO (2007)
I've been trying to figure out what it is that makes "Juno" work. The director, Jason Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman, does a good job. A lot of good directing is getting out of the way. Mike Nichols used to say that if you cast a play well, you had 90 percent of your work finished. Reitman has a good cast here. Some would be considered movie stars, but they are also good actors. There is often a difference.

J. K. Simmons and Allison Janney are particularly good as Juno's parents. They are very honest and real, funny and endearing, and you believe every second that they could have raised a child like Juno, who is, to say the least, unusual.

Jason Bateman is good enough, but he leaves something out; something is missing from the work. That may be because something is missing from the character. That may be the flaw, or the choice he has made. I tend to think that he just hasn't finished developing the spine of the character. And Jennifer Garner does a nice job of doing little in what we'd call a "departure" from her normal character. It isn't really much of a stretch and it isn't too complicated, but she does a good job.

Raiin Wilson, from "The Office," is great, and funny and obnoxious in a one-scene part. But the center of the movie, the real energy, the driving force, and maybe the reason the film works so well, is Ellen Page iun the title role, Juno Mac Guff.

She is an original, an eccentric, unusual, iconoclastic and unique ... all those words that describe someone you never really meet but wish you could someday. Page is great. She looks 14 and she just turned 20. She has a new movie about to open, "Smart People," and she looks even younger. She'll be around forever, and she's Canadian, so she has good sense and won't self-destruct. She's great, as I have already said a couple of times, and she was nominated for an Oscar just to prove me right, but I don't think she is the reason the movie works so well.

I think Diablo Cody is the reason.

She wrote it, developed it from her own story, if I believe what I read. And, she won an Oscar, to prove me even righter. She is the reason Page is so good. It takes more than a great actor to create a great performance. There has to be a script, a story and language, and an environment in which to work. Diane Keaton didn't create "Annie Hall" all by herself. Woody Allen had to see it in her, write it and then create the space for her to grow and flourish.

Cody wrote some remarkable language for Page to speak. The language and Cody herself, from what I have seen, are inspiration enough, if you are smart enough to see it and grab on to it, which Page obviously was, to create a great character. The energy is on the page with "Juno," and everyone involved was savvy enough to see that and get out of the way just long enough to jump on and go for the ride.

I find the movie to be surprisingly formulaic. There are no bad characters. Everyone is well intentioned. Some are flawed or incomplete. It has a happy ending, a predictable happy ending, and a Hollywood ending. It might even be considered sappy. But it works, because it has unusual energy in its language and in its courage and honesty against the world. When Allison Janney tells off the technician doing the ultrasound on her stepdaughter, it is the epitome of the film's clear-eyed insistence on honesty and truth telling.

Even the happy, happy ending can't erase that.

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