Joel and I finally went to see this last night. Joel was angry about it because the writer, Diablo Cody, claims that she wrote it in her free time as a hobby while she was stripping as a profession. We both doubt that she had no formal training after seeing the film.
Regardless, I've wanted to see it since seeing the first preview and I was rewarded. It's really very funny and cute and sweet. Some of the slang gets a little thick and trite but I love the snarky. The basic plot is that Juno (Ellen Page) gets pregnant by sleeping with her friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) and hijinks ensue. Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman as the Lorings (Vanessa and Mark)--the couple who wants to adopt Juno's baby--sort of fall into stereotype but not so much that the movie is derailed or even sidetracked, you just see what happens coming from a mile away (although Joel said some of the reviewers think/think people would think something different about what happens with those two--which I think is silly and a pretty shallow reading of the movie but whatever, I can't say anything about it here or it will spoil the end). Juno's dad (J.K. Simmons) and stepmother (Allison Janney) steal the show. Those two have of the best lines of the whole film and are both spot-on deadpan serious with their line delivery which makes everything all the more hilarious. The story progresses over several seasons and is punctuated by the high school track team (of which Paulie Bleeker is a member) running across the screen--it's funny, very funny, to see these boys in silly little outfits run across the screen and, surprisingly, it doesn't get any less funny as the movie goes on. Very much a must-see movie. Maybe a must-own.
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