"He is the cheese to my macaroni..."

If I were 15 years younger, I would run out right now and buy myself a red hoodie, a pair of tartan plaid Converse sneakers, cool striped leggings, a hamburger phone and two dozen orange Tic-Tacs. Because if I were 16, I'd want to be like Juno MacGuff (maybe not the pregnant part..)- funny in the face of crisis, mature but also childlike, gutsy yet vulnerable, brave, smart, armed with whiplash wit and an awesome taste in music.

After months of putting it off, Jude and I finally watched "Juno" today. We've been meaning to catch it since it opened (and even more after we started listening to its most delightful soundtrack, now on repeat mode...) but we've both been crazy busy and today was the first time we felt little guilt in taking some time off to catch a movie. And it was worth the wait... I was afraid that the experience would be spoiled by all the reviews I'd read and all the good things people have been telling me about it. It's one of those curses where the more someone tells you how wonderful something is, the more of a letdown you know it's going to be.

But this wasn't... If fact, it exceeded my expectations. I knew it was going to be funny, smart and quirky, but I wasn't prepared for how moving and soulful it also was. The movie makes you laugh out loud in so many scenes (there are some absolutely priceless lines like, "That ain't no Etch-a-Sketch. This is one doodle that can't be un-did, homeskillet."), but as the NYT review aptly put it, this is just the movie's way of getting you to clear your throat for the lump you’re going to find there in the last scenes. And the review was right; by the time Juno was pushing her baby out in the delivery scene and Anyone Else But You started playing the background, it took almost all I had to stop myself from bawling.

The movie's probably too Sundance-y to win the Best Picture Oscar this year, but go watch it, if for no other reason than to spend 90 minutes with a cast of characters- both main and supporting- so real, so genuine that they transcend what might appear on the surface to be just another self-consciously quirky indie flick.

In my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person will still think the sun shines out your ass. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with.
-Mac MacGuff (J.K. Simmons)