You'll be pleasant surprised by "Juno"

Rating: 10/10 (5 January 2008)

It's a scenario that's been the fodder for countless romantic comedies, teen comedies, and made-for-TV dramas on Lifetime: a young woman gets pregnant, usually unexpectedly, and has to deal with the pressures of becoming a reluctant mother. While "Juno" does indeed present itself as such, the film quickly and ingeniously shows a slightly comical fluffy side that allows the film to not only deal with sensitive material intelligently and maturely, but we can also have a little fun and a good laugh along the way, too.
Juno MacGuff (played with wonderful wit and sass by Ellen Page), is the 16-year-old title character who gets pregnant following an impromptu liaison with her would-be boyfriend and high school track runner Paulie Bleeker (the fragile Michael Cera, still riding the "Superbad" wave). Juno at first decides to "nip this thing in the bud" and get an abortion. But right away, "Juno" removes itself from the morally black & white abortion area when she does go to the clinic, and decides not to go through with it because "babies have fingernails." Fingernails!
Juno ultimately decides that she's going to have the baby and then give it up for adoption to a loving childless couple - Vanessa and Mark Loring (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) - after seeing their ad in a flier. But first she has to break the news to her pop (J.K. Simmons) and step-mom (Allison Janney) who are just thankful she's not on drugs or didn't get expelled from school. (Fundamentals will ask, "Where are the parents?") But they're not absent or irresponsible parents, they're just along for the ride. Surely enough, Juno gets big (and I mean, big!) as she takes this pregnancy thing in stride. She gets mocked at school by her classmates and ugly looks from her teachers. All the while, we get to see Juno deal with her pregnancy in some greatly comic and offbeat fashions.
"Juno" is a breath of fresh air in the tried and tired "unplanned mommy" genre. It's coming to us with a smart-alecky script written by the provocative Diablo Cody that was directed by Jason Reitman (son of Ivan). Cody's screen writing goes to all the most unusual places and doesn't play games with a teenage girl's fragile predicament. Even though the film may initially come off as some lame drama (there are plenty of heartfelt moments here), it's easy to lose sight of the fact that first and foremost, this is a comedy - a comedy about growing up, the bumps along the way, and the choices we also make along the way. I found myself laughing along with plenty of other theater-goers at some of the witty dialogue and laugh-out-loud funny moments, all planted firmly in Cody's expertly written screenplay.
But "Juno" belongs squarely to Ellen Page, if this is her breakout performance. Already a shining young actress on the rise (I best remember her as Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat from "X-Men: The Last Stand" back in 2006; I never saw "Hard Candy"), she plays Juno as a decisive, clear-headed, sharp-tongued young woman who makes decisions as she sees fit, as they come her way, because it's clear to her that she's not ready to become a mother. I already stated that she's a sassy young woman here, and that sass also gets her some of the movie's best and funniest lines. I also mentioned the "fingernails" line, but after she aborts her abortion, there's a sharply-written sequence of dialogue where she says to the Lorings if they've ever considered adoption from China, because "they give babies away like free iPods." I laughed out loud at that one, even if it sounds a little too politically-incorrect.
"Juno" - it's the little movie that could, the little-movie-that-could that you least expected to love.
10/10