In case you haven't heard, you're going to fall for Juno (Dec. 5) like a lovelorn Alzheimer's patient on a Carnival cruise. The movie hasn't even opened, and it's already been anointed this year's Little Miss Sunshine, with Oscar buzz to boot. (If you don't enjoy it, be prepared to feel pretty isolated in the months to come.)

Director Jason Reitman has assembled a dreamy ensemble cast, with the diminutive Ellen Page squeezing perfectly into the sardonic, overly articulate title character who becomes preggy at the nut of a predictably great Michael Cera and decides she'll give the child up for adoption. Mrs. Ben Affleck (Jennifer Garner), the adoptive mother, reminds you that she can indeed act, giving a finely tuned performance as one high-strung yuppie chick, and Jason Bateman, her deadpan love interest, is lovable in a role that decidedly isn't.

Like Knocked Up and Waitress before it, Juno isn't really about a fetus. Sure, there's an ultrasound scene, and Page trots about with a big belly, but the movie is essentially a quirky, subversive high school coming of age movie—with a birthing scene. Stripper-cum-screenwriter Diablo Cody has conjured a film that feels like the love child of John Hughes and the Riot Grrl movement. Her teen-speak dialogue pops and feels true and fresh, if not entirely believable (what fun would that be?). And while she populates the film with quirks aplenty—including her own hamburger phone—she doesn't push the quirk too far like some indie filmmaker dudes we know.

Still, Reitman occasionally works too hard. He's got the cast, he's got the script ... he could probably chill a bit on the use of tricks, graphics, and gimmicks, which worked better in Thank You For Smoking. Here, it's unnecessary. He doesn't really need to cut to a black and white photo of Patti Smith when Juno says she likes her music. And yeah, the film's got a great soundtrack—Kimya Dawson, the Kinks, Belle and Sebastian—if the cool tunes aren't occasionally relied on a bit too often (quickly, name a hip director under 35 who isn't guilty of that!).

If there's any fault in Juno, it's that the film is occasionally too easy to love, too precious, and too charming for its own good. But hey, who said love always had to be so hard?