Given what people have been posting over the last few days, I'm going to take a guess that the theme is something to do with maturity (and the lack of it). Juno wants to jump straight to being an adult. She thinks Paulie, who's very much a teenager, is an unsuitable partner for her because of that: she bonds with, and feels attracted to ,Mark because he's an adult, apparently the kind of cool adult she'd like to be. But Mark isn't an adult, not mentally - and through that, Juno realises she isn't (and shouldn't be, yet) either. So I guess that makes the theme "you don't have to be older than your years to be happy" or "be immature while you can, so when you're actually a grown-up, you'll be ready to be mature"... Those aren't brilliant, but it's somewhere in that area, I think.

I think you're there or thereabouts, Debbie. Themes can be really difficult to put into words, but I'd say 'growing up' is the main one at work here. Theme is sometimes described as the opposite of the protagonist's flaw (it's more complicated than that, but still), and I think that works pretty well here. Juno's flaw is that she wants to grow up too fast, and she definitely learns the value of enjoying youth while she's young. As you say (and as Scott noted in a lengthy post the other day), Juno's circumstances growing up have led to her trying a little too hard to be an adult. It's clear that being abandoned by her mother has had a profound effect on her upbringing and helped create her snarky, wise-ass persona. Mac and Bren don't appear to impose too many rules on her or control her, and no-one else can. Paulie is happy enough being a normal kid and growing up at his own pace, while Juno looks down on him for that until she realizes he has the right take on things after all. Juno tries too hard to be an adult, and Mark suffers from Peter Pan syndrome. Vanessa's dialogue following Mark's revelation that he's still not ready to be a dad sums things up pretty well: 'You’re trying to do something that’s never going to happen. And you know what? Your shirt is stupid. Grow up. If I have to wait for you to become Kurt Cobain, I’m never going to be a mother.' That touches on another theme - if a theme it can be called - which is motherhood, and it runs through the screenplay and touches almost every character. Juno's mother clearly wasn't ready for motherhood, same for her daughter, whereas Vanessa clearly has what it takes. Bren shows the right qualities with Liberty Bell, and also demonstrates her protective streak in her confrontation with the ultrasound technician. Even Paulie's mother, who gets pretty short shrift in the screenplay, is really just trying to protect her son, and Juno herself shows how protective she is of her unborn child via her distress when she thinks Mark's selfishness will jeopardize its future.

“Contemplating his film’s ["Juno"] out-of-left field success, [director Jason] Reitman said, ‘Right now, there is a lot of really rough dramatic films that deal with things we don’t know much about. Most of us haven’t gone to war in Iraq, but most of us are in a family. Most of us understand about growing up. We live in a time where 16-year-old girls grow up too fast and 35-year-old guys don’t grow up at all. [Screenwriter] Diablo [Cody] portrayed three generations perfectly, and there is something to relate to no matter who you are.”” – Jason Reitman, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, January 23.

That's a great catch, Jeremy, and slots right into my analysis of the movie here and in last night's TweetCast. So I'm glad to see I was in sync with the filmmakers. Thanks for the quote! I'm going to add that to the OP with a HT2U!

One thing I mentioned in the TweetCast last night [transcript to post on Saturday] is the theme of "cool". That word is used at least 20 times in the movie, mostly by Juno, but also Mark and even Vanessa. Remember this moment: VANESSA Have you found a place to stay? MARK Yeah, downtown. VANESSA A hotel? MARK It’s a loft. VANESSA (lightly teasing) Aren’t you the cool guy? They STARE at the wall, speechless and defeated. That last line is such a zinger and even though Juno isn't there, it echoes to her experience of Mark - originally - that he was a cool guy, her romanticized view of what a hip adult would be like. At some point, I went through the movie and made a list of all the cool references. It may be in a draft on this blog, I can't remember. But intentional or not, "cool" is at least a motif that plays throughout the movie.

To me, one of the most insightful lines in the movie, in terms of theme, is when after Mark has revealed he’s leaving Vanessa, Juno says: “I want you guys to adopt the Buglet. I wanted everything to be perfect. Not shitty and broken like everyone else’s family.” I think one of Juno’s main themes is embracing the messy (in life), and ultimately, I think Juno is looking for wholeness, for the void to be filled. Her problem is that she’s mistaken about what she needs. (Actually, I think Mark has this issue too, but he never figures it out.) There’s been a lot of discussion about her drive to be an adult, and I think that drive partially stems from a naïve idea that there are cool people out in the world whose lives are perfect. And as an adult, she can become one of those people – it’s like Juno thinks there are two worlds, the one she lives in with pathetic cactus-grams and broken families, and this hip, cool place where nothing bad happens. It never occurs to her before this moment that Mark and Vanessa might have problems or that he might not be ready to be a father – because to her, he’s the epitome of cool, and of course, their lives must be perfect. While I don’t think it’s all that strong in the beginning, the idea of embracing the messy seemed very prominent to me at the end. Mark leaves and it seems that everything is ruined – but Juno realizes that Vanessa alone is the parent the baby needs, even if it’s not that stereotypical perfect, and in the end, Vanessa is in her messy bedroom but she’s finally fulfilled. Her perfect family portrait ends up being a framed note on a Jiffy Lube receipt. Juno realizes that Paulie is the right person for her, even if he isn’t her initial idea of cool, because he loves her for who she is – and they’ve come through the messy together, stronger. There’s even that tiny scene at the end with Bren and her Weimaraners – she loves dogs but hasn’t been able to have any because of Juno’s allergies – and yet at the end of the movie, she has the dogs anyway. Instead of being pulled apart by this unexpected teenage pregnancy, all of the relationships (save those with Mark) are stronger, and it’s because everyone has seemingly dropped their ideas of perfect and embraced real life.

Melinda, that is a great observation. "Not shitty and broken like everyone else’s family" is absolutely a mirror reflecting Juno's experience of her own life, again going back to that seeming throwaway side about her mother abandoning her via the divorce and remarriage creating a whole other family. And as you point out, it does underscore Juno's rather naive / bifurcated take on life: Cool = Adult. Uncool = Everything else. Do you mind if I use your analysis for a blog post? You make some really excellent points worth a larger discussion. Thanks!

Thanks Scott! Of course, you can use it.