Delivers slightly more than you'd expect but still very much only for an audience that 'likes' this kind of film

Rating: 9/10 (13 September 2008)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
The titular Juno (Ellen Page) is an off-beat young woman in a small US town who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant. Although the father, Bleeker (Michael Cera) is someone she is on good terms with, this isn't how she planned her life and so she tries to sell her baby off to wealthy suburban couple Vannessa (Jennifer Garner) and Mark (Jason Bateman) whilst dealing with all the emotional complications along the way.
Despite the mostly favourable reviews this has received, Juno didn't look like the type of film I would plan to see. But, ma and pa ordered it along with another film and since it was lying around I thought: why not, I may as well. While I haven't seen a film that I'm likely to remember or that I can honestly say is one of the best films I've seen this year, this is undeniably an intelligent, well written comedy film from director Jason Reitman.
Clever though the writing is, ironically it also created some problems with me. Firstly, without stereotyping, from what popular culture has lead me to believe, American teenagers are certainly not this smart or talk in such a smart and sophisticated way. Further-more, if Juno is this intelligent and worldly wise at her tender age, why has she not heard of contraception, which would have stopped her problems in the movie altogether?
Not really my type of film, then, but better than expected and one of the better comedies of the year, probably. ****