There was a time, only a decade or so ago, when daytime television talk shows flooded themselves with pregnant teenage girls. People loved the scandal - middle American preteen girls weren’t only having sex, they were becoming mothers too. Every nationally broadcast channel seemed to have their own program that dedicated at least an hour to the subject each season, and the viewers loved it.

Thankfully, this has become a lot more common these days. You don’t even bat an eyelid when you here little Stephanie has two kids by two completely different fathers by the time she’s 16. The method of abstinence most Sexual Education programs in the United States teach clearly isn’t working but no one really seems too interested in that these days.

Juno is a film that could have easily focused on the shock of such an incident but thankfully decides to deal with other issues. Juno is such a teenage girl (played wonderfully by Hard Candy’s Ellen Page) dealing with the dilemma of upcoming motherhood. She decides to cure boredom one evening by having sex with her friend Bleeker (Michael Cera). They only have sex one time and that’s all it takes.

Juno, for being so young, represents a great amount of maturity by figuring out how to handle the situation before presenting the news to her parents. With the help of her friend Leah, they find a young married couple desperately seeking a child to adopt. She meets with them and they are little hesitant at first, as they think she’ll end up changing her mind. The girl completely understands that she and Bleeker are way too young to care for a child and it would be in better care of a more responsible couple.

Perhaps Juno’s character strengths come from her parents. Her dad (J.K. Simmons) and step-mom (Allison Janney) make little fuss over the whole ordeal and even go as far as to support her decision. It’s rare to see such an open parental commitment on screen.

Jason Reitman is shaping up to be quite the talented filmmaker. Just as he proved with his previous effort, Thank You for Smoking (2006), the merging of comedic elements never offset the dramatic side. Juno is the kind of film one would be expect to be a dramatic tearjerker. Like the kind of film Garry Marshall would produce. Thankfully, it’s far from that and instead ends up being a surprisingly good little film.