Word: juno
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...Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) is a not entirely unfamiliar paradox: one of those teenagers who knows less about the world than she thinks she does, but more about it than the adult world credits her with understanding. You're never quite sure which Juno you're trying to reason with, the innocent idealist or the shrewdly appraising demi-adult, especially since she offers all opinions in the same tone of voice - brisk, brusque, funny and very often dismissive of our pieties...
...When we meet her, Juno is, as people used to say, "in trouble." By which they mean, not to put too fine a point on it, knocked up. This is not the result of a mad passion for Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). She seems to like him all right, but mostly, we gather, she undertook sex more or less in the spirit of experiment. And because it was just time for her to get that little matter...
...couple seeking adoption. The Lorings (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) are rich, welcoming and ostensibly eager for the fulfillment their biology has denied them. OK, she's a little uptight, and underneath his charm there's something elusive about him. But still, given the limited alternatives available to Juno they qualify as godsends...
...turns out to be more of a plot point than a character. His wealth derives from composing commercial jingles, but his heart belongs to his former ambitions to be guitarist in a rock band. But the chaste attraction that springs up between him and Juno, and his defection from his marriage, which briefly jeopardizes the adoption, turn out to be rather beside the movie's real point, which is to make us admire Juno's unconquerable spirit...
...Cody, knows the limits of this story and, better still, the limits of our patience for its sentimental possibilities, and Jason Reitman, the director, is also a cool operator. He's much more a wry observer than an over-eager manipulator of our emotions. One example: almost every time Juno is on the street, a team of uniformed runners goes jogging silently past. They symbolize, I suppose, the fact that there are other people in the world, lost in their own preoccupations, benignly indifferent to the issues absorbing Juno, absorbing us. It is a smart reminder that the story...