Review 728: Juno

                                                                                                               Jason Reitman's Juno is a marvel; one of the best teen films to come out in recent years. It's smart, funny and surprisingly touching in ways that I did not expect from a poster with orange and white strips and an offbeat image of title character starring at the audience.

Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) is an independent-minded teenager who takes a nine-month detour into adulthood when she's faced with an unplanned pregnancy. With the help of her boyfriend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), her supportive parents, pappa Mac (J. K. Simmons) and stepmother Brenda "Bren" (Allison Janney) and her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby), Juno embarks on a hilarious and heartwarming quest to find the perfect parents for her baby. She seemingly finds them in the form of Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner) and her husband Mark (Jason Bateman) but are they up to the task?

The screenplay by Diablo Cody is simple in its subject matter but gives the viewer a lot of meet to chew on. You can look at it as a film that celebrates life and childbirth or you can look at it as a film about a liberated young woman who makes a choice being liberated. Juno, throughout the film, is depicted as a   It works because it doesn't talk down to teenagers, it treats them with a sensitivity and an understanding that

Juno can also be seen as a meditation on maturity.

One of its innovations is to provide us with a stepmother who isn't wicked: Juno's parents are divorced and Mac has remarried Bren who while stern is otherwise a reasonable person, clearly loves Juno and only wants the best for her.

Ellen Page (who played Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat in X-Men: The Last Stand)  Juno MacGuff is a pretty fly chick. She is just truly herself which is pretty substantial and frightening thing but she has this ability to float along and cover it up by teasing and poking and proding those around her  She's confident and intelligent 

Michael Cera (fresh off from Superbad)  playing Paulie Bleeker

Olivia Thirby  playing Leah, Juno's best friend.

Jason Bateman & Jennifer Garner are lovely playing Mark and Vanessa Loring, the couple Juno meets to adopt her baby. Outwardly, Mark seems like he'll be a cool dad and seems like a fun person for Juno to hang out with but deep down, he's hiding his own insecurities, he's just too cowardly to admit it. He's almost a child himself, peacocking his room to Juno where he stores his music and guitar collection and his ambition to be a rock star. From his perspective, he has to deal with his high sophisticated wife who is very uptight and can be cold and judgemental at times while he has interest similar to a teens and being father just isn't his priority.

Garner, on the other hand, is the mature one. She wants to be a mum     The film initially presents Mark and Vanessa as the ideal couple to adopt  they live in a lovely, luxuary, idealic house which Vanessa keeps immaculate, but deep down she knows that her marriage to Mark is falling apart as he's not ready for fatherhood and they want different things out of life. 

Allison Janney

J. K. Simmons  

5/5.