When Juno was released in December of 2007, I paid very little attention. Knee deep in the throes of yet another Christmas season, a movie about a pregnant teenager wasn't registering very high on my must-see list. Though I had been thoroughly amused by director Jason Reitman's 2005 film, Thank You For Smoking, I just didn't think the topic of teenage pregnancy lent itself very well to the kind of high-minded, snappy wit that made Thank You For Smoking such a successful film. Oh, how wrong I was. Juno was perhaps the smartest, wittiest, and most touching comedy of 2007.

While few would consider the issue of teenage pregnancy a laughing matter, first time screenwriter Diablo Cody has crafted an intelligent comedy around the subject. Juno (Ellen Page) is a sixteen-year-old high school student who becomes pregnant after her first sexual encounter. "It's probably just a food baby," says Juno's best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) when Juno announces she's pregnant. "Did you have a big lunch?"

Ellen Page headlines a cast of actors that brings laughs and realism to the group of dysfunctional characters that inhabit the film. Juno MacGuff is one of those millions of high schoolers who go through those years virtually unnoticed — too intellectually curious to be popular and too astute to care.

Most of us can identify with Juno. If we weren't like her in high school, we likely remember someone who was. Juno listens to '70's punk bands and watches obscure horror films. In her off hours, she hangs out with her best friend Leah and tries to make sense of the world around her. Page is able to give Juno an amazing level of maturity, while still allowing her to act like a typical sixteen-year old girl when she has to deal with issues involving her parents Mac (J.K. Simmons) and Bren MacGuff (Allison Janney).

The cast also includes Michael Cera as Juno's friend and the father of her child, Paulie Bleeker. Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner portray the presumptive adoptive parents, Vanessa and Mark Loring. The Lorings live in a neighborhood that looks like it was created by Martha Stewart. While Vanessa is very uptight and obsessed with becoming a mother, Mark seems stuck in adolescence, a man in his mid-thirties still dreaming of becoming a rock star and finding the perfect horror movie.