Kid-tested, mother-approved...

Juno Soundtrack9 out of 10 Remember those mornings when you were a kid, when the light crept in through the blinds into your room and you were gently awoken by the smell of Mom making breakfast downstairs? The aromas of bacon sizzling, eggs scrambling, and banana walnut pancakes being flipped would waft into your room and up your nose, and the coziness of it all would sink in? Like buttered toast or a good bowl of mac-'n'-cheese, nothing says "home" more like the Juno soundtrack. This high-school-reunion of soundtracks has all the songs Charlie put on that mixtape for your senior year, plus a few new ones that are sure to become fast favorites. Why does one buy a soundtrack? Is it because it reminds you of your favorite scenes from the movie? Or is it because the soundtrack is so good that it can stand alone? In most cases, the movie takes center stage and makes the soundtrack. Other times, the soundtrack carries the movie (remember that one song that was supposed to change your life from Garden State?). Very rarely do they compliment one another as deliciously as peanut butter and jelly. Enter Juno.For those of you in a cave, Juno is the sleeper flick that is slowly winning America's heart one Kimya Dawson performance at a time. Part comedy and part romance, the flick tells the tale of 16 year-old Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page), a senior in high school, and her quest to find the permanence of true love after she gets knocked up by Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). After resolving to see the glass as half-full instead of half-empty, she decides to give the miracle of life to hopeful-parents-to-be Vanessa and Mark Loring (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman). Despite several bumps in the road, Juno's self-discovery ends with ... well, you'll just have to see it. Although there are no llamas named Tina, you'd think Juno would really be pushing its luck with its Napoleon Dynamite-esque quips and lingo at the beginning, but you'll be able to see past the rural Minnesota setting and into Diablo Cody's brilliant script. It's adorable, really.It was about an hour into the film when I fell in love with Juno. Bateman and Page are sitting in his living room talking when all of a sudden Bateman's character breaks away and says, "Do you hear that? I love this song!" He turns up the volume and we hear Thurston Moore's slinky, seductive whisper on Sonic Youth's cover of the Carpenters' "Superstar." All of a sudden, memories flooded my mind of being in my friend's car on the way to a Radiohead show and hearing Sonic Youth's "Superstar" for the first time. I remember being totally consumed by everything about this song: how Moore's sultry voice creeps in and swallows you whole, how the grand piano hits you right before the chorus, and how the spacey effects are countered by a minstrel-like guitar. It was love at first listen. That was the summer I discovered Sonic Youth; it was the closest I'll ever get to a summer of '69. A little later in the movie, I had another of many episodes of deja vu when Page's character says to Bateman's, "And you know what else? I bought another Sonic Youth album, and it SUCKED. It's just noise!" I remember thinking the same thing after I got Dirty because it sounded nothing like "Superstar." It was awesome.The soundtrack features all your favorites by everyone from Cat Power to Buddy Holly to Belle & Sebastian. Don't be surprised, however, if after hearing Kimya Dawson and Barry Louis Polisar you find yourself asking, "Who are these people and where have they been all my life?" The music didn't just directly correlate with the mood of the film; it created the entire atmosphere. The songs were the chocolate chips to the movie's cookie, whether it was the satirical timing of cueing the Kinks' "A Well Respected Man" when Michael Cera puts on his track shorts, the innocence generated by Cat Power's "Sea of Love" as you peek through invisible curtains to watch Ellen Page and Michael Cera share a moment in the hospital, or the light-hearted playfulness seen throughout most of the film due in part to selections like "I'm Sticking with You" by the Velvet Underground and "All I Want Is You" by Barry Louis Polisar. It even seems as if the movie has created quite a buzz around the Moldy Peaches' Kimya Dawson, who now struggles to cope with her newfound fame. Her six or so tracks off the album seem like a segue into a new genre of music: kids' music for adults. These sparse yet catchy tunes capture stream-of-consciousness to the max with lines like "My war-paint is sharpie ink/ I'll show you how my shit stinks." So inspired was I that I even decided to start a band and write my own frolicsome ditties. Man, I hope she makes it through this hard time.I burned the soundtrack for a friend before he had seen the movie. Although he listened, enjoyed, and reminisced, he pointed out that the tracks by Sonic Youth and Mott the Hoople seem to come out of nowhere. Why did they pick those songs? After having seen the movie for the second time with him, however, we noticed that Sonic Youth and Mott the Hoople were both props in the actual movie itself; both were played by the characters at some point. Now excuse me for getting a bit Freudian, but seeing as how both "Superstar" and "All the Young Dudes" are both covers (come on, we all know "All the Young Dudes" is really just Bowie's song), we can concur their usage reveals something about certain characters and the facades they may be putting up. The fact that they have Bateman's character choose a cover as his favorite song tells the audience that he may not really be who they think he is. This clever use of song should go down as #37 in your reason to see Juno. Reason #38 should be that you'll be missing out on one of the best films this year if you don't.