The AFI Festival delivered an early screening of Juno as its Centerpiece Gala that also doubled as a red carpet event in the Cinerama Dome at the Arclight. There were uniformed joggers, complete with uncomfortably short yellow shorts, stirring attention outside the theater as they jogged around urging people to go see Juno on December 5th. Unfortunately, the festival had tandem screenings and we were in a theater upstairs. While we generally prefer a normal theater to the Dome, we missed all the red carpet excitement, and most of the joggers’ antics, plus there was an introduction from the cast in the Dome and all we got was director Jason Reitman. Seemed like a nice guy, but I would have preferred Ellen Page and Jason Bateman.

Despite all of this, I have to say right away that Juno is such a cute, adorable, and quirky movie! It’s everything you expect it to be and then some. It's so good, even, that I can almost find nothing to say about it except, go see this movie when it comes out! There were definitely laugh out loud moments, but also tender ones; at one point I even choked up a bit. For those who haven’t heard what this movie’s about, it follows a 16 year old high school girl, Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page), who gets pregnant after sleeping with her close friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). Knowing that she’s too young to keep the baby, but having reservations about aborting it, Juno turns to the Pennysaver where she finds a seemingly perfect couple (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) to adopt her child. If you’re thinking this movie might make light of teenage pregnancy, think again. While the film is hysterical, it also makes a point to show how immature Juno is. She refers to people as “dude” and “holmes” and calls the abortion clinic from her hamburger telephone.

The cast works so well together- I loved Ellen Page as the snarky, sarcastic Juno and Jennifer Garner plays the baby-obsessed mommy-to-be Vanessa with an endearing charm. The real scene stealers, however, are J.K. Simmons and Alison Janney as Juno’s father and stepmother. They are surprisingly supportive of their pregnant teenage daughter’s decision to have the baby and yet still make fat jokes and poke fun at the elastic sewn into her jeans.

The soundtrack to this movie is fantastic- a bunch of quirky little songs that play beautifully with the story. The most prominently used tune is The Moldy Peaches’ “Anyone Else But You” which plays a few times and is even sung by Ellen Page and Michael Cera in the film. It almost seems as though this movie was written to accompany this song, but apparently it was chosen for the film by Ellen Page as a song that she thought Juno would listen to. I think she is probably one of the coolest cats in Hollywood these days, plus she’s got an enormous amount of talent and promise. I hope to see her stick around for a long time.

After the movie we were disappointed to hear there was no Q&A, so we missed out on seeing the cast altogether, but we spotted J.K. Simmons on our way out the door so all was not lost. For two Spider-man geeks, seeing J. Jonah Jameson made the experience totally worth it