Juno

Juno made me so happy.  I wanted to leave the theater and walk right back in to see it again.  And I’m going to spend far too much time talking about how it was perfectly cast. Ellen Page is Juno, a sixteen year old girl who gets pregnant.  The father is her friend Bleeker, portrayed by Michael Cera (of Arrested Development fame). Juno decides that she is going to have the baby and give it up for adoption, and also decides to find the couple in the local penny saver ads. She finds her perfect couple in record time.  Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) and Mark (Jason Bateman) Loring have the perfect house in the perfect suburb and they cannot wait to be parents.  They are from the beginning too good to be true. My favorite thing about the movie is the interaction of Juno with her father and step-mother.  Played by Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons, they have the funniest and the most poignant lines in the whole film.  Juno thinks she needs to find perfection, and I think they make her see that sometimes it doesn’t work that way.  But you can get pretty close. I loved this movie and I loved the music.  It perfectly mirrored the quirky tone of the film, which is what a good soundtrack should do.  It is definitely one of those movies that can make you laugh and cry. Congratulations to Juno on its four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture!