I was excited about this one, and it's as good as I'd hoped. Juno is a bit like a messier, better version of Garden State - less realistic and more real than that other (the fact that its protagonists are about five or ten years younger than those in Garden State is really neither here nor there).
At first, in the initial flurry of quirk upon quirk, I feared that the movie was trying just that little bit too hard, but it completely won me over as it went on. The trick is, I think, the entirely sweet-natured character of the film - given its nature and many of its characters and set pieces, Juno could easily have been quite dark and acerbic, and yet it never shows more than a hint of such elements, and is a better film for it.
It's one of those unexpectedly subtle films that wraps up the sympathetic viewer and brings them into its own world for its duration, and then releases them with a feeling of wanting to hug somebody. Plus, there are two Belle and Sebastian songs on the soundtrack ("Piazza, New York Catcher" and the classic "Expectations"), the marvellous If I Were A Carpenter cd gets a shout out, and the film-makers find room for the whole (I think) of Cat Power's "Sea of Love" over a tender moment - gold.
