I think I might want a hamburger phone

Rating: 9/10 (13 August 2008)

I was familiar with Jason Reitman before "Thank You For Smoking", from his fantastic short film, "In God We Trust", which I caught at a film festival a few years back. I was a fan of Diablo Cody after seeing her on Letterman and buying her book Candy Girl: A Year In the Life of an Unlikely Stripper the very next day. And I knew all too well how great an actor Ellen Page was from seeing "Hard Candy", so "Juno" was a no-brainer for me ~ I was there the very first day it finally opened in my neighborhood.
This is one of those rare films that actually lives up to and mightily surpasses its majestic hype, thanks to Cody's killer script, Reitman's sure-handed direction and a thoroughly captivating performance from Ms. Page, who manages to create a character we hadn't quite seen before but yet feel we know intimately by the end of the movie.
Brilliant casting throughout, especially Michael Cera as Juno's true love Paulie Bleeker and J.K. Simmons as her father, but everyone here serves the production beautifully.
The best thing about Cody's script is how specific the details about the characters are - she gives just enough to flesh them out, make them 3-dimensional without telling too much and losing the edge. And she makes all the right choices in the course of the story, for these characters, whom she clearly loves - just when we think it's going down a predictable road, we get something different. Brilliant choices for the music too - it's quirky and quietly understated, adding still another magical layer to this near-perfect and heartfelt winner of a film.