Elliot Page[a] stars as the title character, an independent-minded teenager confronting her unplanned pregnancy and the subsequent events that put pressures of adult life onto her.

Juno won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and earned three other nominations for Best Picture, Best Director for Reitman, and Best Actress for 20-year old Page (who was presenting as female at the time, and is the sixth-youngest nominee in the category).

In Elk River, Minnesota, 16-year-old high-schooler Juno MacGuff discovers she is pregnant after sleeping with her friend and longtime admirer Paulie Bleeker.

Originally intending to get an abortion, Juno visits a local women's clinic and encounters a schoolmate outside, who is holding a one-person anti-abortion vigil.

With the help of her friend Leah, Juno searches the ads in the Pennysaver and finds a childless married couple she feels will provide a suitable home.

Mark works at home composing commercial jingles, having abandoned his rock band youth, which is now confined to memorabilia displayed in a single room of the house that Vanessa has designated for his personal belongings.

As the pregnancy progresses, Juno struggles with her feelings for Paulie, whom she has maintained an outwardly indifferent attitude towards, but jealously confronts after learning he has asked another girl to the upcoming prom.

Despite having deliberately not told Paulie because of his track meet, he deduces that she is giving birth anyways after seeing her missing from the stands and rushes to the hospital, where he comforts her as she cries.

[6] Hadley Freeman of The Guardian criticized Juno for "complet[ing] a hat-trick of American comedies in the past 12 months that present abortion as unreasonable, or even unthinkable—a telling social sign", though she noted, "I don't believe any of these films is consciously designed to be anti-abortion propaganda.

"[17] Diablo Cody was first approached to write a screenplay by film producer Mason Novick, who had previously landed her a book deal for her memoir, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, after discovering her blog about stripping.

[6][20] Much of Juno, however, was based on Cody's own high school experiences: She dated a tic-tac-loving boy similar to Paulie,[21] she was best friends with a cheerleader like Leah, and she used a hamburger phone identical to the one that appears in the film.

[23] Other directors, including Jon Poll,[24] were considered, but Reitman was chosen and he interrupted work on his own spec script in order to direct Juno.

"[32] Jennifer Garner, who accepted a lower salary than usual to prevent the film from exceeding its budget,[33] was confirmed by Reitman to have signed onto the project in January 2007.

[35] Lucas McFadden, better known as Cut Chemist, a DJ and record producer, makes a cameo appearance as Juno and Paulie's chemistry teacher.

[42] That final scene depicted Juno and Paulie singing The Moldy Peaches' "Anyone Else but You", and band member Kimya Dawson visited the set to speak to Page and Cera while they were practicing the song.

[48] He gave Messina a collection of Dawson's songs and asked him to create "the sound of the film" through an instrumental score that replicated the recording quality, tone, feel and innocence of her music.

[48] He found children's songwriter Barry Louis Polisar's "All I Want Is You" after "surfing iTunes for hours on end" using different words and names as search terms and thought that the handmade quality was perfect for the opening titles, which were afterwards made to correspond to the song.

[48] The "Brunch Bowlz" jingle, Mark writes in the film, was composed by advertisement writer Chris Corley, with whom Reitman had previously worked on a set of commercials for Wal-Mart.

[55] The footage displayed on Juno's ultrasound monitor is of supervising sound designer Scott Sanders's son Matthew and was embedded into the scene in post-production.

[59] With vintage 1970s punk-rock posters as inspiration, Smith and artist Jenny Lee decided to create a sequence that "had texture and a little bit of edge, but also imparted the warmth and heart of the screenplay".

[59] The pictures were cut out and scanned back onto the computer, then layered onto the background drawn by Lee with compositing software[58] to create a stop motion animation sequence that corresponded to "All I Want Is You" by Barry Louis Polisar, the song Reitman had chosen.

The two-disc DVD edition includes the same extra content and four additional featurettes ("Way Beyond 'Our' Maturity Level: Juno – Leah – Bleeker", "Diablo Cody Is Totally Boss", "Jason Reitman For Shizz", and "Honest To Blog!

[75] In limited release and playing in only seven theaters in Los Angeles and New York City, Juno grossed $420,113 over its debut weekend, averaging $60,016 per screen.

David Edelstein of New York magazine felt that the film was desperate to be "a movie that confers hipness on teens, that makes kids want to use the same slang and snap up the soundtrack".

"[88] In 2008, after 17 students under sixteen years of age at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts became pregnant, Time magazine called it the "Juno Effect".

[90] After Senator John McCain named Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate on the Republican presidential ticket, it was revealed in September 2008 that Gov.

So, now that we can firmly state that realistically depicting the lives of the tiny percentage of girls who do become pregnant won't necessarily contaminate the rest of them, it's time to stop worrying and ask what we can do to help.

[109]Sara Morton, the head of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, issued a statement explaining that the film had never been submitted for Genie Award consideration by its studio.

The fifteen tracks include songs by previously featured artists Kimya Dawson, Barry Louis Polisar, Belle & Sebastian and Buddy Holly, as well as Astrud Gilberto, The Bristols, Jr. James & The Late Guitar, Trio Los Panchos, Yo La Tengo and Page singing "Zub Zub", written by Diablo Cody as part of the script in a deleted scene.

[115] Rhino also released a Deluxe Edition, on November 25, 2008, containing both the original soundtrack as well as B-Sides in a two-disc set, along with storyboards from the film and additional liner notes from Reitman.