Smart, charming and daring comedy

Rating: 8/10 (16 April 2008)

The supposed taboo of teenage pregnancy is tackled full on in this smartly-written but still hugely enjoyable comedy. Rising star Ellen Page plays Juno, the girl in question, who discovers that she is pregnant at the age of 16. At first, she wants to abort it, but soon decides the best thing to do is give it up for adoption. Written by Diablo Cody, who has gained mass amounts of publicity for her previous career as an exotic dancer, Juno combines jug-loads of wit and charm with a brilliant cast featuring the ever watchable JK Simmons as the smart-but-firm father, Jennifer Garner as the uptight but well-meaning adopter-mother and Michael Cerna, who carries over his awkward nerd shtick, perfected in such laugh-a-thons as TV cult series Arrested Development and gross-out comedy Superbad. Although some have complained the dialogue is unrealistically smart for pre-graduate high-schoolers, you will lose yourself in the story too much to bother caring.