smart and intelligent comedy drama....

Rating: 9/10 (10 February 2008)

When Juno finds herself pregnant, rather than have an abortion she decides to give it up for adoption, and after checking the ads in a local paper decides on a couple from the suburbs...
Juno is a movie that shouldn't really be so good. With it's premise - a teenage girl finding herself pregnant and deciding to give the baby up to a couple - this in other hands could have been a melodrama, a tragedy, or any manner of things. Instead, the screenwriter, Diablo Cody, has turned it into a smart, funny story.
Central to this is a stunning performance from Ellen Page as Juno. On screen for almost the entire movie she easily handles the weight upon her shoulders in carrying the movie. The rest of the cast, Micheal Cera, JK Simmons, Allison Jenney, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, and others are all very good too.
Some of the critics of the movie have said that it is too smart for it's own good. What's wrong with that?? No-one complains that Joss Whedon was writing smart funny dialogue in Buffy, for example. And here the dialogue IS smart and funny. The characters are well thought-out, and it's also clever in the way it plays with your expectations. Just when you think you know where it's going and how it'll end, it pulls off a couple of clever little touches that change your expectations.
The director Jason Reitman handles the mix of comedy and drama very well. The soundtrack is very impressive also, perhaps one of the best, recent soundtracks in a modern movie.
This is a movie that fully deserves the awards it's received, and it's Oscar nominations, especially for Ellen Page and Diablo Cody. As recent so-called teen movies (and I'm not sure it really is a teen movie) go, this is by far one of the best.