Kids Today!

JUNO
Running Time 96 minutes
Written by Diablo Cody
Directed by Jason Reitman
Starring Ellen Page, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman and Allison Janney

Movie teens are not what they used to be in the days of Junior Miss. In the freakily amusing Juno, Jason (Thank You For Smoking) Reitman applies his groundbreaking irreverence to the tale of a fresh-faced, potty-mouthed young Lolita (talented Ellen Page, best remembered for catching and torturing a handsome pedophile played by Patrick Wilson in Hard Candy) whose touchy-feely experiments with rock, sex and designer drugs have turned her into a pregnant high-school statistic. The idiot who knocked her up (Michael Cera) eats out of the microwave and washes his soiled gym shorts in color-safe bleach. Recognizing poor husband material when she sees it, Juno heads for an abortion clinic, where she’s handed a free boysenberry-flavored condom with this cheerful advice: “My boyfriend uses them every time we have intercourse—they make his gunk smell like pie.” Like I said, teens have changed since the days of Peggy Ann Garner. Anyway, with the full approval of her parents (J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney), Juno decides to give the baby away to someone needy, “like a woman with ovary problems, or a couple of nice lesbos.” She decides on a pair of sexy, affluent yuppies (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman), but when the husband turns his testosterone on the pregnant teenager, the movie hangs a sharp left and Juno is forced to make decisions of her own that change everyone’s future. These are people of all ages who are way down at the bottom level of maturity, but the snappy, new wave dialogue and a sprightly cast that considers suburban insanity as normal as an addiction to nasal spray and one-calorie breath mints turns Juno into an incendiary comic spree. Think A Date With Judy on crystal meth.