Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I loved Jason Reitman's freshman effort, THANK YOU FOR SMOKING and his next flick, JUNO, has been something I've been following since it was first announced. Reitman's an exciting darkly comic voice in film right now and it looks like he's getting even better with this one. Thanks to Anant for the review! I can't wait to see this one for myself. Just to see Ellen Page, Jason Bateman, Michael Cera, JK Simmons and Rainn Wilson in the same movie is enough to get me in the theater... Enjoy the review!!!

Harry,

I haven't seen anything from Copernicus about 'Juno' on the site, so I'm going to assume that he didn't get a chance to see it. While it would've been a treat reading his review for it, here's mine if you guys are interested in this lovely little movie that Fox Searchlight is pegging as their Oscar Indie hopeful of the year.

'Juno' premiered at the Ryerson Theater in downtown Toronto with a crowd packed with Jason Reitman fans (or perhaps they were fans of Ellen Page...or of Michael Cera....or of Jason Bateman....or of Allison Janney....or JK Simmons. I really couldn't tell!) That the movie would exceed their expectations was a foregone conclusion and it only added to the overall excitement as I sat down with a group of rowdy frat boys to my left and a middle aged couple to my right. Obviously 'Superbad' was the common element to this audience...right?

'Juno' is about a precocious 16-year old named Juno MacGuff and her tiny little problem (the MacGuffin if you will...ahem!) that begins, as she puts it in the opening scene, with a chair. And now she's had her weight in Sunny D so that she can pee the third time to confirm that she is in fact pregnant, which she is. So what does she do about this little problem? Well, that's what the movie is about, and I'll just leave it at that. While I wouldn't be giving away anything significant, this movie is best enjoyed with absolutely zero knowledge of its plot and its wonderfully realized characters.

The two aspects of this film that stand out immediately are the script and Ellen Page. Written by Diablo Cody (a.k.a Brooke Busey-Hunt, of Pussy Ranch blog fame as Wikipedia helpfully tells me) this is one of the smartest to come out in a very long time. The dialogue is a delicate mix of teenage slang and wonderfully absurd and erudite vocabulary. It's the kind that actors probably dream of delivering and they do a marvelous job with the material, every last one of them. Including Garner! heh...

Ellen Page is a complete revelation in this film. As scarily talented as she is, her performance in 'Juno' is without precedent in her short career. Not even 'Hard Candy' could've prepared us for what she delivers here, and that was a bloody hard act to follow for any actor. If the Oscars are a barometer for success, then she deserves some recognition for 'Juno'. Awards or not, she's fucking fabulous in this!

The rest of the cast is positively brilliant! The Bluth boys are awesome as always, and JK Simmons and Allison Janney are fucking hilarious. Much like 'Arrested Development', the humour is fast, furious and all verbal. You laugh so hard that you miss the next joke which is delivered in the same breath as the one you're howling at to begin with. As funny as the movie is, it is also extremely touching and sensitive in its portrayal of the characters and the situation they're in.

Fox Searchlight is obviously feeling good about the movie as they've positioned it for a Dec 14 release. I would've personally liked to have seen this release in the next month and have it grow through word of mouth and then embrace the Oscar season, but I'm sure it'll do well regardless of when it's released.

As Diablo Cody said during the Q&A "hey, somebody's asking me a question! Alright, my time to shine!!".

And so will 'JUNO'.

If you use this,

Anant