Review of Juno

Many things are very true about Jason Reitman's pearl of a film called "Juno," and one of them is that while you're watching it, while it pulls you in as if through a portal to another life and dimension, you believe every outrageous line that comes out of the 16-year-old mouth of Juno MacGuff.

And that is why they call it great film writing, not to mention solid acting and direction.

"Juno" is this year's "Little Miss Sunshine," the quirky, unlikely sleeper hit that succeeds not with a cast of millions, or a Brangelina-ish name above the title, or with CGI effects that blast you out of your seat and implant a permanent buzzing sound in your ear, but with a confluence of perfection in every aspect of the film.

Written by blogger and former stripper Diablo Cody, directed by Ivan Reitman's kid and starring a young actress named Ellen Page with a pitch-perfect sense of character, "Juno" is the story of a high school girl who gets pregnant almost by accident. She and her best friend, Bleeker (the gifted Michael Cera of "Superbad" and TV's "Arrested Development"), planned to watch TV one night because "The Blair Witch Project" was going to be on and they hadn't seen it since it came out. But instead, they had sex.

A few weeks later, multiple home pregnancy tests (a.k.a. "pee sticks") confirm that Juno is pregnant. Her best girlfriend freaks out more than Juno does, warning her of how her body will explode and her breasts will start "milktating." For her part, Juno contemplates hanging herself with red candy rope but eats it instead on her way into her house, where, eventually, she fesses up to her dad, Mac (J.K. Simmons), and stepmom, Bren (Allison Janney).

She contemplates her choices, and pays a visit to the Women Now clinic with the intention of having "a hasty abortion," as she puts it. On the way in, an anti-abortion protester who happens to be a schoolmate tells her the fetus already has fingernails. Inside, Juno watches people in the waiting room, scratching themselves and flicking their nails, and makes a run for it. No dialogue is spoken. It could be argued that Juno doesn't really think her decision through to have her baby, but I don't buy it, nor, I suspect, will most people who see the film. Juno is not an idiot. She controls her body, her thoughts and her life, and she's empowered to do that by loving, attentive parents.

Juno decides to have her child and to give it up for adoption to a young, well-off couple who have advertised their hopes in the penny-saver, right next to the ad for exotic birds. The prospective parents are Jason Bateman, as Mark, a commercial jingle writer who can't quite let go of his youthful dream of becoming a rock star, and his maternal-minded wife, Vanessa, played by Jennifer Garner.

Many will see this film and be blown away by Cody's dialogue, by the brilliance of her words, the sizzle of the wisecracks, but perhaps the best writing in her superb script is in the development of the characters of Mark and Vanessa. They are brilliantly gray, morally ambiguous. You like them both at first. You can't help it. He seems a bit reserved, but, gosh, she wants a baby so badly and so what if she's a bit domineering and has ordered her husband to keep all the souvenirs of his youth, including his Les Paul guitar, in "his" room, so they won't clutter up the perfection of their blandly but expensively decorated home? Has she thought much about whether a child is right for both of them? Has he had the courage to tell her that maybe he's not quite ready for fatherhood?

Gradually, aspects of their respective characters come into sharper focus. We see Mark as something more predatory than just a hen-pecked, stay-at-home jingle composer who loves Sonic Youth's take on the Carpenters' "Superstar." And we see her as perhaps a bit too obsessed with motherhood, maybe even a tad selfish. Cody crafts some amazing dialogue for Juno, but the real proof of her screenwriting brilliance can be found in the quiet delicacy and subtle sadness of Mark and Vanessa's characters.

Although everyone gets some tasty lines to deliver, Juno's dialogue ripples with ironic humor, cultural awareness and what some literary critics used to call "brand-name fiction" when minimalists like Raymond Carver patented the form a few decades ago. When Vanessa first meets Juno and asks how far along she is, Juno deadpans, "I'm a junior." Contemplating how difficult it's going to be for Mark and Vanessa to adopt her baby, Juno wonders why they didn't just go to China, where "they give away babies like free iPods."

These are funny lines, and Page delivers them perfectly every time, but they also help us understand that, unlike typical movie adolescents, Juno is a complex human being. She's worldly wise, can take care of herself, will never suffer fools lightly, but as time goes on and the perfect little solution she thinks she's found begins to dissolve, another side of her emerges, the side that's still a little girl, that doesn't know all that much about life, and that is just learning that people can let you down or not live up to your idealized visions of them.

Cody's script is such a dazzler that Reitman may not get the credit he deserves for his careful direction. Only 30, he already knows that character tells and character sells. He doesn't try to jolly things up with a lot of tricky camera angles or phony effects. Instead, he focuses on the actors and their performances, and no director could ever wish for a more able cast.

Page carries most of the film, but makes it look easy, despite the complexities of Juno's character she's called on to develop along the way. Cera, of course, again proves himself a master of deadpan, a kind of modern-day Buster Keaton whose slightest gesture, the flicker of change in a facial expression, communicates every thought in his character's head and feeling in his heart.

His fellow "Arrested Development" alumnus, Bateman, is, at once, bland, reserved, emasculated, sad, then somewhat creepy and ultimately a selfish boy-man who isn't taking all that well to adulthood. As his wife, Garner has one of the best roles of her career and makes the most of it at every turn. She never stops grinning, but as we watch the way she modulates that klieg light of a smile, just a bit, here and there, she carefully reveals the mix of fear, insecurity, resentment and resolve that informs her character.

A lot of people will be happy about "Juno," but none as much as the members of the Writers Guild of America, whose continuing strike has already stalled new episodes of many TV shows and threatens future film productions as well. In Cody's script, the guild has one of the best reminders it could ever hope for of just how important high-quality writing can be to great filmmaking and great film acting.

All three elements conspire for greatness in "Juno," but there's something else at work here, and that's truth. Cody's words, Reitman's direction, the performances of the entire cast, from Page's leading role to Rainn Wilson's cameo as a convenience store clerk, are perfectly true in every moment. "Juno" isn't a film made in the bell jar of unlikely reality that is, far too often, Hollywood: It's a film whose attention to real-life detail is so fine, audiences will be hopelessly and happily lost in its story from the first frame.