Juno

This features a strong and characterful performance from Elliot Page in the title role. She is a young girl who somehow manages to convince her rather naive and drippy boyfriend "Bleeker" (Michael Cara) to have sex. When she becomes pregnant, she decides against an abortion and so offers the baby up for adoption to "Mark" (Jason Bateman) and his rather obsessive wife "Vanessa" (Jennifer Garner). The remainder of the gently entertaining film follows this young woman as she gradually deals with her pregnancy, her relationship with her parents and starts to bond with "Mark". It's this latter storyline that begins to illustrate to her not just the cracks in that marriage, but also her own feelings about herself, her unborn child and it's father. The film offers a witty and sometimes quite emotionally effective observation of how she evolves as a person and though the denouement itself is rather flat, it's still quite a fun outing for all concerned. Allison Janney and JK Simmons work well together as her parents who inject a certain amusing realism to the fact that their daughter is expecting a baby, not doing heroine! The dialogue is well written with an enjoying degree of sarcasm and plausibility to it that quite frequently raises a smile.