The movie was about teen pregnancy, and thus the actual bringing about OF the pregnancy -- some rather quick and understandably clumsy sex -- could not be lingered upon or presented as particularly enjoyable.

Which is too bad, because if modern life has given us one particularly rewarding pleasure in a sea of the dull and the grim and the depressing...its sex, eh?

With good birth control, the sex that triggers the crisis in "Juno" wouldn't be 30 seconds worth of stumbling. It could be hours (upon hours!) of bliss. Without resulting in that "baby issue" upon which the film hinges.

Probably kids should be older than the ones in "Juno" before getting into recreational sex in a big way(preferably with a loving partner in a long-term relationship, sure) , but hell, sex is biologically programmed to be at its best -- at least at its most athletic -- when you're young.

I wonder if the movies will ever bring us a movie about teens -- oh, alright, college kids -- using birth control and having lots and lots and lots of sex, and enjoying it.

lucabrasi, I understand what you're trying to say, but my first instinct is still to go for the cheap shot and say that sounds like a porno. Cheap shots aside, I'm not sure you would have much of a plot if the movie is mostly about college kids enjoying lots of sex.

In a movie, something has to be at stake. i.e. does the guy get the girl? Does their love withstand the challenge of... whatever? If the answer is never in doubt, the movie is no fun! And what good is a movie nobody wants to watch?

That's certainly true.

It's too bad though. You end up, in "Juno" with a sex scene which makes it look like the most depressing thing in the world. And then the father of Juno has lines like "What were you thinking?" or "This is my irresponsible daughter" to keep pounding the topic of what a mistake she made.

The truth is that the real world of having sex IS like a porno. You're having sex. That's it.

The movies indeed have to have plots, problems, character development, etc.

Probably the best movies about "good sex" don't show much sex at all. They simply create a favorably erotic mood that the dating or married couple can take home with them.

P.S. "Juno" did address one aspect of this issue: the proposal that having so bungled sex their one time together at such a young age, the couple had to break up. The movie headed towards getting the young couple together again at film's end, and with the hots for each other still. "Juno" posits the potential for love -- and sex -- again after an unplanned pregnancy. And that's a good thing.

My first instinct is to say, yeah, a movie with lots and lots of hot sex=porno. But then I remembered the recent film version of Lady Chatterley and I changed my mind. This is the rare movie that shows lots of hot sex--no actual gyno shots or anything, but plenty of frank, lingering nude scenes--and is mostly about two people having sex, but somehow manages not to be exploitive.
True, the actors aren't nubile college kids, but not hard on the eyes either. I learned a lot from it, and not because I've never had sex, either.

There was a TV movie of Judy Blume's Forever (the novel that every girl I knew in high school read at some point), which was about a HS girl who lost her virginity and had nice sex with a boy she later broke up with. It wasn't very explicit (this was TV, after all) and the main roles were cast with 20ish actors (which is the same as films, and frankly, I approve--even the implication that a 12-year old Brooke Shields was sexually active in Pretty Baby gave me the creeps, and I'd like to think I'm fairly broad-minded).

The fact is, Juno made the sex between a pair of teenaged kids clumsy and a bit depressing because, usually, among teenagers, it is clumsy and a bit depressing. Real life rarely lives up to books, movies, or your more fevered masturbation fantasies. That was one of the more refreshing aspects of the film.

I wonder if the movies will ever bring us a movie about teens -- including college kids -- not engaging in premarital sex, thereby reducing the number of abortions performed and STD's being contracted each year.

I wonder if the movies will ever bring us a movie about teens -- including college kids -- who have self respect and self control, a desire for a functional marriage worth working to protect and strengthen before bringing babies into the world.

I wonder if the movies will ever bring us a movie about teens -- including college kids -- who were raised by an unwed mother, in poverty, with little advantages, on public assistance who fights like hell to ensure they do not repeat the cycle of misery in which they were born.