Juno

Starring: Elaine Page, Michael Cerys, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Alison Janney, JK Simmons
Director: Jason Reitman
Written by: Diablo Cody


Juno Mac Guff (Elaine Page) is a bored 16 year old American girl who finds herself pregnant after a one night stand with her best friend Pauly Bleeker (Michael Cerys).
Three pregnancy tests later she realises she is ‘fo’ shizz pregnant’ as she tells her friend on her hamburger phone.
Having originally decided to have an abortion, she backs out after the trip to the abortion clinic leads her past a lone anti abortion protester from her class, who tells her that her foetus has fingernail at this stage. As a result she tells her father and her step mom, (JK Simmons and Alison Janney) of her dilemma. They are shocked and dismayed, and had been hoping when she sat them down for this talk, that she’d been ‘expelled or addicted to hard drugs or something’.
Juno decides that the best solution to her problem is to look for adoptive parents for her baby, and sets about finding them in the local news paper. The answer to her prayers is Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner) and Mark Loring (Jason Bateman), a local couple who’ve been trying for a baby for five years with no success. She feels immediately that they are the right people for her and signs the necessary paper work.
Juno’s nine months are difficult, dealing with the stares and whispers behind her back in school, and the physical side affects of pregnancy. However she forms a friendship with Mark, a composer, someone who’s into the same music and movies as her. Her step mother doesn’t agree with this burgeoning relationship, but Juno feels there’s nothing amiss and continues to visit him at home while his wife isn’t there.
A spanner is thrown in the works when Mark reveals to Juno that he’s going to leave Vanessa. One gets the feeling that Mark is interested in Juno but this is never explored. Juno is understandably upset by this revelation, telling him that the couple taking her baby was meant to be something beautiful and unbroken, unlike every other family.
The film deals with a lot of difficult issues, teen pregnancies, teen angst, relationships, marriage break downs, and handles them with aplomb. There are always comedic moments within the heavier issues and an excellent cast help this quirky movie to work very well.
The young Elaine Page, having been lauded in such movies as Hard Candy, carries the film well, with excellent back up from the rest of the cast. This film is along the lines of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ and others of this indie/comedy/tragedy genre recently surfacing at the movies, and holds its own with them. Well worth a viewing.