Juno [DVD] [2007]

Description

Product Description Upbeat coming-of-age story about a smart teenage girl who has to face life full on when she falls pregnant. When Juno (Ellen Page), a teenager with all the answers, finds out she's pregnant to her classmate Bleeker (Michael Cera), she soon realises she has to ask for help from family and friends. Luckily, she enlists the help of her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) in trying to find a couple to adopt her unborn child, while her understanding parents (J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney) provide the support she needs to help her through some tough times. When Leah finally uncovers a young, affluent couple, Mark and Vanessa (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), desperate to adopt, it seems the perfect solution, until Juno finds herself having to face some serious adult decisions while trying to figure out her place in the world. .co.uk Review Somewhere between the sharp satire of Election and the rich human comedy of You Can Count On Me lies Juno, a sardonic but ultimately compassionate story of a pregnant teenage girl who wants to give her baby up for adoption. Social misfit Juno (Ellen Page, Hard Candy, X-Men: The Last Stand) protects herself with a caustic wit, but when she gets pregnant by her friend Paulie (Michael Cera, Superbad), Juno finds herself unwilling to terminate the pregnancy. When she chooses a couple who place a classified ad looking to adopt, Juno gets drawn further into their lives than she anticipated. But Juno is much more than its plot; the stylised dialogue (by screenwriter Diablo Cody) seems forced at first, but soon creates a richly textured world, greatly aided by superb performances by Page, Cera, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman as the prospective parents, and J.K. Simmons (Spider-Man) and Allison Janney as Juno's father and stepmother. Director Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking) deftly keeps the movie from slipping into easy, shallow sarcasm or foundering in sentimentality. The result is smarter and funnier than you might expect from the subject matter, and warmer and more touching than you might expect from the cocky attitude. Page's performance is deceptively simple; she never asks the audience to love her, yet she effortlessly carries a movie in which she's in almost every scene. That's star power. -- Bret Fetzer, .com