Juno is a mostly enjoyable comedy about teen pregnancy and its aftermath

Rating: 8/10 (19 June 2008)

I just saw this movie with my parents. My dad complained about the title character's lines saying they're more likely to come from an adult than from an actual teenager. My mom just seemed to like the wittiness of the whole movie. During much of the beginning, I was ready to agree how overrated and pretentious some of this movie was based on reading many of the comments I've scanned through here. But while not every pop-culture reference was funny and I half wondered how many viewers would get the comparisons of Dario Agento to Herschell Gordon Lewis (with a scene from one of his movies, to boot!), I was enthralled by the various relationships between the characters and actors and the way they mainly flowed under Jason Reitman's direction of Diablo Cody's Oscar-winning screenplay. While Ellen Page also deserved her Academy Award nom as Best Actress, the most compelling performances to me were the potential adoptive parents played by Jason Bateman and especially Jennifer Garner. As an "Arrested Development" fan, it's also a little strange seeing Bateman and his TV son Michael Cera here and yet since they're not related in this film, they don't have any scenes together. But that's not too much distraction to me. Add in J. K. Simmons as Juno's father and Allison Janney as her stepmother and this movie is nearly perfect. There's also an amusing turn by Rainn Wilson in the beginning. While perhaps not a great lesson on pregnancy and its choices, Juno does manage to consider there are such choices. All considered, this movie is mostly enjoyable enough that I may consider seeing it again sometime soon.