Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.

Wow. Talk about pressure.

Diablo Cody has somehow picked up the PR nickname “the new Quentin Tarantino,” and I've routinely seen it tossed out in criticisms of her. Particularly in dismissals of her.

Let’s set hype aside for a moment. Let’s set aside the celebrity appearances on talk shows for her book and the name change and the image and the sort of prepackaged “Diablo Cody” moment that’s happening right now. Because there’s one thing that hype does better than anything else: it kills small movies stone cold dead.

Let's set aside the crushing weight of expectations.

Is this a good script? Is JUNO a good film?

I'll say this much... I think JUNO is a massive leap forward for Jason Reitman as a director from THANK YOU FOR SMOKING. I think his first movie is exceptionally clever. But I think clever only gets you so far. I think JUNO is also clever, but tempered with a sympathetic ear for unsympathetic people, no simple trick. The difference is, of course, that Cody’s script is much more unruly than THANK YOU FOR SMOKING. It’s charming because it stubbornly refuses to be the film it should be by every rule of Hollywood. It’s a warm film. It’s affectionate towards its characters, but it’s also unflinching. I think Jason Bateman does great work here as a guy who simply... fails. He’s a good guy in a lot of ways, but he’s a dumbshit and a coward in other ways. And the way Bateman plays him, I don’t blame him at all. It’s just who he is. In fact, that’s the key to the script that Cody’s written. This is a film about people realizing that they need to really be who they are, and the things they do to make that happen. It’s that simple awakening that spreads like a virus that makes the film more than just a bunch of punchy rapid-fire dialogue between pretty much a laundry list of some of the best and the brightest working right now: Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Olivia Thirlby, Allison Janney, J.K. Simmons, Rainn Wilson...

... and, yes, Jennifer Garner. The consistently underrated, consistently undervalued Jennifer Garner. The trailers for this film are all focused on Ellen Page, and rightfully so. She’s Juno, after all. And she gives a slam dunk of a star performance. The role is such a great sassy showcase that it’s almost too easy.

But Garner? Garner’s playing a role that is next to impossible to pull off. I can’t really explain without getting spoilery, so be warned. She’s presented as such a control freak sort of desperate career woman at the start of the film that it’s hard to imagine that she’ll be likeable. And especially with Jason Bateman as her husband, the “cool guy” who is way more laidback than his “uptight” wife. But the way the film plays out, Garner is revealed to be the heart of the film. Juno may be a brainy little thing, but once Garner connects, it’s her movie. The last act of the film, she really steps up. It’s moving, lovely work, some of the best she’s done.

I think Michael Cera is a secret weapon still. I don’t think everyone understands yet how insanely great this kid is. He’s really sort of amazing in every scene he has here. In fact, in my house, I’ve created a new rule which says that any time anyone makes any reference to Michael Cera, they are required to preface his name with the modifier, “The Great.” As in, “Oh, yeah, I loved SUPERBAD starring Jonah Hill and The Great Michael Cera.” Easy enough, right? And seriously... he’s that good in this. Paulie Bleeker is not George Michael. He’s not Evan from SUPERBAD. Bleeker’s a totally different specific kid, and just as a sight gag, Cera really nails it.

Reitman’s got a completely different sensibility than his father did. Ivan Reitman’s early films were technically raw to the point of being sort of inept, and I think his best-looking overall film remains GHOSTBUSTERS, where he reached the height of his craft, although one has to wonder how much free reign his FX department had to craft the stuff that’s the most cinematic. With Jason Reitman, I get the feeling he’s trying to make films that matter to him, not CAA packages that come attached to a greenlight, and not just a star vehicle. I think it’s impressive that he’s managed to establish his own identity in just two films as a director, and I hope he stays the course... I hope he doesn’t turn into a guy cranking out empty studio comedies for years. I think he’s more interesting than that.

I respect his taste in attaching himself to Cody’s script. This is the sort of film that is all dependent on finding the right cast and knowing what tone everyone should be playing. It’s fun writing that doesn’t really sound real at first. Lots of slang. Lots of attitude.

And then over the course of the film, the slang and the attitude sort of drop away, and things get increasingly real. Recognizable. It’s a nicely written script in the sense that I think it’s very rigidly structured, but it feels like it’s loose and unpredictable. It knows where it’s going from the very first frames, and I think the payoff to it all really works. More than that, I think it's got some fairly sigificant things to say, although it whispers them. The messages that are here are subtle ones, never preachy.

I don’t know if I think JUNO is one of the year’s very best films. I certainly admire and enjoyed it, and I can’t wait for DVD to show it to my verrrrrrrrrrrry pregnant wife, who can’t get to the screenings with me at all anymore. I hope JUNO finds a wide audience. I think that, once you strip all the hype away like I did at the start of this, JUNO is a solid, smart, sweet film, one I’m glad I saw. Really... beyond that, do you need any hyperbole? Any at all?

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles