Juno

Juno is a mostly well-written comedy-drama highlighted by a great performance from Elliot Page.

The plot sees Page as a whip-smart teen who, after learning she’s pregnant, finds a couple, played by Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman, to adopt her unborn child.

The dialog makes the movie. Screenwriter Diablo Cody channels David Mamet by way of Quentin Tarantino to create a world where everyone talks in instant catchphrases, and yet it all feels perfectly natural, though it will be interesting to see how well Cody’s dialog, which feels trendier than Mamet or Tarantino’s, holds up over time.

Regardless of how well it ages, the biggest beneficiary of said dialog is Page, whose performance as the titular character carries the film. Her deadpan delivery is note-perfect throughout the entire movie, and echoes an early Bill Murray.

Supporting Page is a stellar cast including Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Michael Cera, Allison Janney, and J.K. Simmons, who steals all his scenes as Page’s character’s father.

However, despite its very slick veneer, Juno isn’t perfect. The film goes along so well for the first two thirds, as it dances around the bleak reality of its own situation, before it finally falls back on corny sentiment in order to deliver a more upbeat ending. In so doing, Cody obscures some of the most intriguing issues she raises, such as Jennifer Garner’s character’s obsession with motherhood, and Jason Bateman’s character’s disenchantment with his own life. Simply writing the characters into the roles of hero and villain respectively feels far too pat, for a story that, up to that point, felt very nonjudgmental.