(2007) Delightful and delicious, director Jason Reitman's film from Diablo Cody's first screenplay, is the jelly to a peanut-butter sandwich. Cool songs to the soundtrack, too.

During the fall semester of her junior year in high school, Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) finds out with a pregnancy test that her singular (unprotected) indulgence in premeditated sex with friend and band mate Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) has given her a plus sign, making her something more than she was before. Some positives can be negatives: unexpectedly she's expecting.

Named after the wife of the Roman god Zeus, not the city in Alaska (nor my Internet Service Provider), Juno is a smart, cute, independent-minded sixteen-year-old whose peers often see her (she thinks) as a dorky geek. When Paulie sees her sitting in a stuffed chair with a pipe in her mouth on his front lawn and finds out he's the father of her "sea monkey," he ignorantly tells her she should do whatever needs to be done. "I'm sorry I had sex with you," she responds.

A visit to a Women Now clinic (where Su-Chin stands outside with a poster protesting abortions) changes her mind about getting rid of the fetus. Her friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) suggests looking for parents to adopt in the Pennysaver where they find a couple who have been trying futilely to have a baby for five years.

Juno's father Mac (J.K. Simmons) and her stepmom Brenda (Allison Janney) handle the news calmly, though afterward Brenda says to Mac she was hoping to hear Juno had been expelled or was on hard drugs.

Ten miles away in St Cloud, Minnesota, Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) and Mark (Jason Bateman) Loring sit down with their lawyer, Juno, and her dad to discuss the terms for a closed adoption (Juno's preference) with compensation for all medical expenses. Asked if that is all the compensation she wants, Juno says she doesn't "want to sell the thing," only that the "sweet, screaming, pooping life" will have good parents.

In the winter Juno stops by the Lorings' trophy home to share her ultrasound image of the fetus and chat with Mark, a composer of commercial jingles who works at home, (when Vanessa is at work) about their shared interests in music and slasher movies. She repeatedly reassures Vanessa, who previously had been disappointed when another girl got cold feet with a similar arrangement, that she's absolutely certain to hand over the baby.

Quirky of mind and struggling with deep meaning in her soul, Juno dishes out lines such as the Chinese are giving infants away like free iPods and the sacred vessel inside her isn't the same as a Taco Bell lunch. In the spring Juno with an enlarged abdomen gets upset when she learns that Paulie has asked another girl to the prom. Mark shows her a Japanese comic book of "The Most Fruitful Yuki" to assuage her feelings of self-loathing. Telling her dad that she is losing faith with humanity, she asks him: "Is it possible two people can stay happy together forever?"

In the summer after her ordeal she says of Paulie: "He is the cheese to my macaroni."

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in video and/or DVD format, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

Patrick Ivers can be reached via e-mail at .