Big message wrapped up in a warm and comical film

Rating: 9/10 (4 September 2012)

I can't say that Juno is necessarily realistic in the way the some of the characters handle Juno's unexpected pregnancy, but I don't think that was the point. The point was to explore the different meanings of love through numerous and varied characters, and in that sense this film is very successful. Some of the dialogue is quite frank, which definitely provides for some comical moments, and everything is done rather straightforwardly, but that adds to the quirkiness of the film, and without the amazing screenplay by Diablo Cody, not to mention Jason Reitman's very sure direction, this film would be nothing.
Ellen Page does an incredible job as a teenager, despite getting pregnant at such a young age, acting beyond her years in maturity in dealing with the situation, and yet she is still a child at heart, and wants so deeply to hold on to that, which is shown in everything from the way she dresses, to the things in her room, to the very fitting and sort of indie soundtrack that goes along with the movie. Michael Cera does a great job as Juno's shy and diffident best friend, Paulie Bleeker. He doesn't get very involved with the pregnancy, and almost seems unaffected by it until the end, when everything sort of starts to fall apart and come together at the same time. Their relationship is fantastic--some of the best parts of the film are the few times they're together. Everyone else in the cast, from Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman, to Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons also do well in their roles. Ellen Page, however is still by far the star of this movie--no one else could've played this role except her.
What sets this movie apart from others, though, is it's feel, and there's really no other way to describe that, except perhaps maybe the way it makes you feel. The whole film, despite dealing with very mature subject matter, is almost casual and laid back. It is not immature or inappropriate in the way that it handles the complex situations it throws its characters into, but it does so very lightly, only brushing on the mature parts, which is somewhat childish, but this is from a teenager's point-of-view. It is not a feel-good movie, and yet you do feel good at the end, not necessarily because of how the movie ended, but because how the characters got to that ending.
It's kind of a love story, but more of a quest to discover what love truly is, which sounds a little corny, but the characters don't even know that that's what they're doing the entire time. This is all shown brilliantly throughout the end sequences, which were probably designed to elicit tears, but at that point you should be too self-satisfied with how everything turned out to be able to cry.