Juno Rules

Juno, the small independent film about a smart, sweet, and ultimately wise beyond her year’s teenager who makes some unconventional choices after she gets pregnant, sailed past the $100 million mark and is still going strong.

Made for a paltry $6.5 million, the film and its heroine has become the rare cultural phenomenon that speaks directly to teenage girls, their mothers, sisters, even their fathers and brothers. If Hollywood has an ounce of common sense, the studios will FINALLY get the message that women are movie-goers too.

If Hollywood isn’t quite ready to trash the business model that targets the majority of movies towards adolescent males, then studios at the very least need to get serious about providing well-made, relevant entertainment for a female audience, from teenagers on into adulthood. With Diablo Cody’s smart, sassy, script about the choices one young girl makes, perhaps the studios will at last understand that women matter. And we matter a lot.

Four women were nominated for Oscars in the Best Original and Best Adapted Screenplay categories, all with great stories to tell and various perspectives to tell them from. They deserve the chance to tell those stories and others. Juno rules and here’s to ushering in a change of thought that’s long overdue.