Juno: A-

It started with a film festival. Juno, a little indie from a rather well-known director (Jason Reitman, director of 2005's uproariously sharp Thank You For Smoking) and a rather provocative first-time screenwriter (Diablo Cody, who spent a year as a stripper just to...well...try it out), exploded onto Sundance - inspiring just the sort of rave reviews and warm obsession marked by last year's Little Miss Sunshine; comparisons between the two carry over from that though: both begin with a coyly ironic title sequence (though, to be fair, Juno's is a tad more colorful and less precious) and both would seem to flaunt their precocious "empathy" in their respective audience's faces. That is where the similarities end, however. As last year's Indie Rave became less human, and more relatably askew (ending, in two strange twists, with a the theft of a dead body and one odd strip tease), Juno does just the opposite; it pounces early on the opportunity to astound watchers with its hyper-articulate banter and then slows down to actually become, to my ever-growing surprise, a very good movie.

Don't think however that the ancestry of 1,000 little dark comedies about the travails of teenage life don't pulse in the lifeblood of Cody's script; or that the performances of Ellen Page (as the title character) and Co. don't perch on the line between cute-sy and true. No, I make no claims that Juno doesn't seem to be just like everything else - just that, given roughly forty-five minutes or so, it becomes so much more.

But what we begin with doesn't seem to inidicate this. We're given the postmodernly-feminist story of a hip teenager (Page) who gets pregnant with her best friend (Michael Cera) through a rather apathetic turn of events (read: she was bored, he was horny). The tricks are in the telling. First: Juno decides to give up the baby for adoption, realizing immediately that she can't handle it but that she would like someone who could. Second: the old adage that everyone laughs to keep from crying serves writer Cody deceptively well as she subtlely and masterfully steers the story of this adoption to two surburban yuppies (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) into an area of beguiling grace. Third: that grace has no better magnet than Juno - and the actress who plays her. And fourth: Reitman and company work double-time, driven constantly by such a blithely and perfectly constructed creation as the script, to make every laugh hit hard and every tear and dramatic reveal do twice as much.

If my also rather blithe and fast-paced review doesn't do Juno justice it isn't for lack of trying, or astoundment. I came expecting the laughs inherent in any precocious production as this. What knocked me down, and touched me afterward, was the surprising level of depth that there is here. Juno MacGuff is a character all right - and so are her parents, friends, and assorted other compatriots - but the satisfying truth at the core of this strikingly-made picture is that she never shifts from teenage girl to "teenage girl"; the indie quirks one looks for all day during their viewing will never materialize and finally I can see why: Juno isn't just Girl Gets Pregnant, it's girl has baby...and gives it away.