Last year, actress Ellen Page delivered one of the scariest, most intense, and most memorable performance in years in the thriller Hard Candy, about a pedophile who gets what’s coming to him from a little girl he’s praying on, a 14-year-old who is much more intelligent and aware than the man thinks she is. And here we are, just a year later, and Ellen Page once again delivers a unique, superb, and just as memorable performance in the wonderful comedy Juno, written by first-time screenwriter Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking). It’s easily one of the best comedies of the year.

Your enjoyment of the movie relies heavily on what you think of the character of Juno. She’s a specific kind of creation, and she may not be to everyone’s liking. But I fell in love with her. She’s a wise-cracking 16-year-old girl who takes shit from nobody and just wants to have “the thing,” aka the baby she was impregnanted with by her semi-boyfriend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). Juno breaks the news to her parents (J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney) that she’s pregnant, and they’re a little bit mystified but willing to help in any way they can. Juno thinks about getting an abortion at first but decides she wants to have the child and wants to give it to a set of nice parents. She looks in the Wanted ads and finds a pair Vanessa and Mark (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman), who look to be normal enough. Over the course of nine months, she learns that it may be impossible for her baby to grow up in a perfect environment and that she may be more attached to the baby than she initially thought.

Juno is the second great comedy this year to focus on an unwanted pregnancy and the effects of how two people can feel about each other when a baby becomes involved in the mix. Juno is just as good as Knocked Up and may be even better because Juno doesn’t let the story ever drift away from the main character. While Knocked Up would too often drift over to secondary characters, Juno always remains with Page’s creation, making us truly care about her journey. She’s a complex character who starts the first act like a person who can be phased by nothing. She’s pregnant. Damn. So what, right? She’ll deal. Part of the humor of the first half of the movie comes from her indifference to the whole situation, as she acts as if she’s just got a pimple that won’t go away. The beauty and emotion of the movie come through in the second half, however, when Juno starts to realize the ramifications of her decisions and just how life-altering the pregnancy is. Knocked Up works well because we hate the jerk that is Seth Rogen’s character for a good portion of the running time, but we get to see his transformation to the kind of guy who really could be a father. Juno’s transformation is more subtle, but just as resonant. And it’s more unpredictable. She’s such a fiery little time bomb that we never know how she’ll react to certain situations, and the place she ends up in is not entirely what one might expect.

This movie has a lot of heart, but it’s also, thankfully, laugh-out-loud funny. Diablo Cody’s script is hilarious with a capital H, and there are some fantastic lines in the movie, two of the best given by Allison Janney’s stepmother character. It’s rare to see comedies that make you laugh out loud a lot throughout its running time while at the same time putting a big fat grin on your face, and Juno just happenes to be one of the most movies. And the great thing is that the humor comes out of the characters and the situations, rather than throwaway gags and mindless slapstick. It’s hard to be funny, and writer Cody and director Reitman perfect the balance of this screenplay. Juno could easily be too quirky for its own good, a criticism that will probably be given to it for those who don’t care for it, but I found the movie to be just quirky enough without going overboard. There were moments in Reitman’s first feature Thank You for Smoking that I found to go a little bit over-the-top, but never in this film.

The cast is amazing. This film may be more perfectly cast than any other movie this year. Page, as said earlier, is a delight as Juno. She’s probably the only known actress of her age and stature and wit and fire that could play this kind of character successfully. She IS this character, through and through. She’s hilarious, while at the same time, feeling entirely real and not like she’s spouting clever, well-written dialogue. Michael Cera, hot off of Superbad, is a terrific quiet complement to Juno’s outspoken personality. His reaction to Juno telling him she’s pregnant is kind of priceless, and the route this character takes to the ending is subtle but winning. Jennifer Garner is not an actress I like all that much, but I loved her in this as a seemingly stiff woman who wants nothing more than a child to care for. The easy way to have taken this character would’ve been to make her the villain, out to steal her child, but that would be too easy. Jason Bateman plays her husband, who may or may not be ready for a child, and he is nothing short of charming. The friendship that he and Juno develop is a lot of fun to watch. And then there’s J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney as the parents, who also could’ve been walking, shouting cliches of parents horribly upset at their daughter about her unplanned pregnancy. Instead, they are warm and gentle to her, offering to help in any way possible, and they therefore work extraordinarily well together. Simmons, who we know as the loud newspaper editor in the Spiderman movies, has a soft-spoken character here who has a handful of really heartfelt scenes with Juno, and Janney, who could’ve easily been the evil stepmother, is absolutely hilarious and surprisingly supportive of Juno’s every decision. There’s not a bad apple in the cast here, a rare feat in such a specific kind of comedy as this one.

There’s really nothing to say except see this movie. It seems like every year we get one, maybe two, great comedies like Juno, a movie that can be seen and loved by people of almost any age. Like last year’s Little Miss Sunshine, Juno features lots of big laughs, a terrific cast, a wonderful story, and a smart screenplay. Diablo Cody has a voice to watch for, and director Reitman proves with this film and Thank You for Smoking that he’s one of the best young filmmakers working today. But it’s Ellen Page who’s the breakthrough. For those who have seen Hard Candy, it’s been clear for awhile that she’s a star in the making. With Juno, she proves that she can handle both the most intense of drama and the funniest of comedy with ease and perfection. She’s someone truly worth getting excited about.

Juno opens in limited release Wednesday, December 5.

4 stars (out of 4)