Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

I thought Jason Reitman’s first film, THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, was a nice adaptation of a blisteringly wicked book. Didn’t love the film, but I thought it worked okay, and it seemed like Reitman had some real promise.

Has he fulfilled that promise with this film? That certainly seems to be what the word out of Toronto is, and it also marks a real arrival for screenwriter Diablo Cody, whose script is already being talked about as a possible Academy Award contender. I’m dying to see Michael Cera do more great work this year, and this one can’t hit theaters soon enough for me:

JUNO is *the* buzz film of Toronto this year. It is the one thing that seemingly everyone agrees on. My review has been a few days coming because I've been watching movies non-stop, and I can't figure out a way to write about it without seeming like a gushing idiot. That's OK, I might as well be one of the early JUNO fanboys, because this isn't just a cult movie, it is an instant classic. It has a kind of magic to it that you can't find by following a formula, or you couldn't have predicted ahead of time. At the screening I attended it got a standing ovation, one of two I have seen so far (the other was SLEUTH, which I will review later).

First, the premise -- Juno is a sixteen year-old, brilliantly played by Ellen Page, who gets knocked up with the spawn of Michael Cera of SUPERBAD fame (here playing classmate Paulie Bleeker), after an afternoon of chair-sex. Juno takes it all in stride, as though she's built her own little universe that she's going to float through mostly carefree, relying on her wit and wisecracks melt or stupefy everyone she meets. Juno ultimately has to reveal her situation to her dad played by J. K. Simmons, who abolutely kills. J.K. Simmons should be automatically signed on to play the dad of every daughter in every comedy from here on in. Alison Janney is equally brilliant as Juno's stepmom, and gets to show off her comic timing with some sweet zingers. Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner are the prospective adoptive parents, and while they don't have as many of the comedy beat, they each get a chance to show some depth to their characters.

This is Jason Reitman's follow-up to THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, he has proven he's every bit as gifted as his father, Ivan. From the distinctive music to the animated titles to the shots and pacing, everything works together to create what seems like its own almost-surreal, but kind of grounded world. It is a world where everyone is clever, where sweatbanded high-school running teams parade their junk past the camera in slow-motion, where recliners double as lawn furniture, where the phones are shaped like food, and where Rainn Wilson works at the convenience store and lectures you on "pee sticks." The Junoverse is as distinctive and quirky as a Wes Anderson film.

In recent years with shows like CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM and THE OFFICE, you might say uncomfortable is the new funny. But with movies like SUPERBAD and JUNO, sweet raunch is the new trend. In many ways, JUNO feels like the flip side to SUPERBAD -- it focuses on the girl's side of the teen hook-up equation, and more on family dynamics than buddy hijinks, but the tone is the same -- light, breezy, peppered with dick-vag jokes, and just a dash of seriousness when the characters need to grow.

So much of the credit goes to first-time screenwriter, Diablo Cody. She's an absolute genius, the kind of writer you notice and want to see everything else she does. The dialog is so punchy, and it comes so rapid-fire, that I missed a lot of lines because the audience was laughing so hard. In fact, the one piece of criticism I've heard of the movie is that the characters almost seem *too* witty – each character always has the perfect comeback. But that's just another way of saying that Diablo Cody has style -- her script seems unmistakably her own. Just as Tarantino has distinctive crime dialog, and Woody Allen's self-effacing observations on adult relationships are unmistakable, Cody has proven that she is the ninja master of teen-teen, and teen-parent wisecracks. When Reitman was introducing Cody at the screening he said there are few times in your life when you remember the first time you discovered some a rare talent, but we would all remember that day as the day we all discovered Diablo Cody. The audience was in complete agreement. And, to top it off, at the Q&A she was dressed in a t-shirt with a faded superman logo, a red miniskirt, and knee-socks!

But in addition to Reitman and Cody, a huge share of the credit has to go to Ellen Page. Juno as a character carries a movie with such charisma and presence as we have not seen since Ferris Bueller. At the Q&A, it was clear that she has a personality every bit quick-witted and commanding as the character she played. She was under-used in X-MEN 3, but when this hits there are going to be all kinds of geek fantasies about a Kitty Pride spinoff.

Come Christmas, JUNO thing is going to rock the hell out of the box office, because it seems to play well to both men and women of all age groups, from teens to octogenarians. I can't wait to see it again.