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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-06-09
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 92 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Somewhere between the sharp satire of Election and the rich human comedy of You Can Count On Me lies Juno, a sardonic but ultimately compassionate story of a pregnant teenage girl who wants to give her baby up for adoption. Social misfit Juno (Ellen Page, Hard Candy, X-Men: The Last Stand) protects herself with a caustic wit, but when she gets pregnant by her friend Paulie (Michael Cera, Superbad), Juno finds herself unwilling to terminate the pregnancy. When she chooses a couple who place a classified ad looking to adopt, Juno gets drawn further into their lives than she anticipated.

But Juno is much more than its plot; the stylised dialogue (by screenwriter Diablo Cody) seems forced at first, but soon creates a richly textured world, greatly aided by superb performances by Page, Cera, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman as the prospective parents, and J.K. Simmons (Spider-Man) and Allison Janney as Juno's father and stepmother. Director Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking) deftly keeps the movie from slipping into easy, shallow sarcasm or foundering in sentimentality. The result is smarter and funnier than you might expect from the subject matter, and warmer and more touching than you might expect from the cocky attitude. Page's performance is deceptively simple; she never asks the audience to love her, yet she effortlessly carries a movie in which she's in almost every scene. That's star power. -- Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com

Synopsis
The word 'quirky' has become the quick and easy way to describe films such as Little Miss Sunshine and Lars and the Real Girl that straddle the lines between indie and studio films and comedy and drama. While Juno fits into that same category, this distinctive dramedy is in a class all its own. Ellen Page (Hard Candy) stars as Juno, a witty teenage girl whose boredom doesn't lead her to the mall. Instead, she makes a one-time trip into the arms of her best friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera, Superbad). When Juno discovers that she's pregnant, she's forced to grow up fast as she tries to find adoptive parents for her quickly growing child.

Juno might have a lot of strengths--Page's award-worthy performance, a pitch-perfect soundtrack, excellent direction from Jason Reitman--but it's the screenwriting debut of writer Cody Diablo that makes this such a winning film. Famous for her blog and her book Candy Girl - A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, Diablo has a unique voice and an incredible ear for dialogue that led to her winning a Bafta and an Academy Award for Juno's script. But even the nearly perfect script wouldn't sound so good if it weren't for the talents of these actors, particularly Page. She won rave reviews for her first major role in Hard Candy, but this performance proves it wasn't a fluke. The rest of the cast, especially J.K. Simmons as Juno's dad, is just as worthy of attention. Junocontinues Cera's cinematic ascent after his success with the hit comedy Superbad, and his Arrested Development co-star Jason Bateman uses his dry delivery to great effect as a potential parent for Juno's baby.

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Customer Reviews

Juno
I like this film. It makes me feel young again Lol I love the juno character , she is so cool. Im defo going to buy this , i love it

Quirky-by-numbers
As a previous reviewer said, this film tries too had to be different. It's as though the film makers knew all the ingredients to make a kooky, weird independant film, but didn't know how to mix them together.

I'm normally a fan of these types of films - Lost in Translation, The Life Aquatic, and all that - but despite its obvious desire to be highly charming, Juno just feels hollow. There's no emotional gravity, no real depth of character. You feel as though the target audience is the same age or younger than the main actors, as though Juno were the movie equivalent of those cheap plastic "my first kitchen" oven sets they sell in toy stores.

I use the term 'actors' loosely. It doesn't help that Ellen Page isn't a very good actress. Annoyingly sarcastic and smarter-than-thou throughout, she's instantly dislikable. Michael Cera is neither good nor bad, just seems to float along on whatever script is handed to him (he was hilarious in Superbad, but not so in this one).

It reminds me of an Apple commercial, particularly the recent line of iPhone ads - all slick and fake cutesy charm, distilled and dumbed-down, created for people who are more into style than substance, who want to be cool so much that they'll pay anything you ask them to. A victim of the filthy practice of marketing executives packaging "being different" and trying to sell it back to us.

Sorry, Juno, but I ain't buying.

Annoying and generic.
The makers of Juno seem determined to make it quirky and different and have made the same rubbish as numerous other so called independent movies. The music is a love it or hate it thing. I didn't like it. The dialogue is terrible, no one talks like thatm well a few people but not all the time. The onlt likeable character was the kid that fathered said sprog. he actually comes off as sweet and likable.