Hitsville has been waiting for it, ever since noting dyspeptic screeds from the Chicago Sun-Times and the Village Voice. Dana Stevens in Slate looks at the controversy and finds … a dyspeptic screed in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Steven then goes on to begin to track an anti-backlash backlash, but, much as it pains me to say it, I think the “Juno” backlash never got off the ground in the first place. The film is at $117 million and still making $5M a week, which isn’t going to stop for at least another month, assuming it comes away with at least one Oscar win. (Stevens tracks well the critical consternation over screenwriter Diablo Cody’s twee hipster patois in the first act of the film, but it can’t be denied that the character developments are handled with a preternatural control; her only real competition in the screenplay category is “Michael Clayton.”) That’s a lot of money for a film with such modest ambitions, but since it is so modest there’s really not a lot there to get all het up about.

In the end, I think Cody handled well the potential minefields of the plot that might actually have fueled a genuine debate over the film. For example, in the end, Juno’s trip to the abortion clinic was handled with just the right meta touches. Juno’s flip attitude toward the decision and her even flipper about-face once she went to the clinic was a sign from Cody where her feelings on the subject lay; to an audience as hip as Cody (and, by extension, Juno), the sequence ultimately read:”Woman’s right to choose, blah blah blah. This is a story about someone who didn’t happen to.”

Cody’s a smart writer and “Juno” is a touching movie, so it probably doesn’t deserve a backlash in any case. But gosh are those first 20 minutes twee. And I still don’t get how Juno can like Iggy Pop and Kimya Dawson.