Yay, I really enjoyed it too :-)

Me too.

Interesting point about the non-standard families: I hadn't spotted that. The two things that made me go, "Er, hang on" a little bit were the question of abortion (which you've mentioned) and the way Juno's parents reacted to the news (namely that they were a bit surprised and worried but basically absolutely fine). To me the answer is that if the film had really addressed these two points with its full attention and concern for plausibility it would have had no choice but to be a completely different film. A really careful look at those points would have taken the whole length of the film, with no time left for what the author wanted to tell us about.

So she just deals with them as three-dimensionally as she can without getting bogged down in them, trusts the director and the actors to make them seem plausible when you're actually watching it (which they do), and then gets on with a lovely lovely film about what to do when you're a witty and irretrievably pregnant teenager in Minnesota.

The film is so carefully put together and generally "issues" are quite well-handled so I felt like churlish whinging about the presentation of abortion and families. For me part, I didn't mind the way her parent's reacted to the news, I thought it avoided the usual emotional cliches which was important and I thought it was subtly quite poignant because there was clearly quite a lot going on beneath the surface. I thought it came across that they were both *trying really hard* to handle it well, as I think loving parents would hope they would in such a situation.

And her father does say "I thought you were the kind of girl who knew when to say when" which understatedly articulates the idea that he's disapointed in her and bewildered by what's happened but doesn't want to say that to her openly or start blaming her for something that can't be changed. And when she replies quite seriously "I don't know what sort of girl I am" ... ah! I thought it was lovely. *goes in search of tissues*