I’ve got a bad feeling that I’m going to be hearing the name Diablo Cody for longer than I’d care. Perhaps if I changed my real name to something clever I too could become a successful screenwriter. Apparently, that’s about all it takes in Hollywood these days.

“Juno” is the story of sixteen-year-old Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page), who lives in Minnesota somewhere I think and who gets pregnant and tries to figure out what to do with the baby. Like virtually every sixteen-year-old in every independent film ever made, Juno is so wise and satirical beyond her years that she should be dead. The formula of this film is to unload colloquialisms like sand from a dump truck and wait for the accolades to pour in.

Juno decides to keep her baby after a distressing visit to an abortion clinic and its one protestor. She tells her father (J.K. Simmons) and her stepmom (Allison Janney) about being pregnant and their reaction is typical of independent film parents in that they don’t yell and scream, instead they make funny jokes and are fairly understanding. Dad is surprised that the father (Michael Cera) “had it in him”.

Juno elects to give her baby to a babyless couple, Vanessa and Mark Loring (Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman). Vanessa has one of those female child-longing looks that’s straight out of a “Redbook” ad. It’s like she’s been standing in line for bread for six weeks. Mark is obviously tolerating her need in a typically disinterested male fashion that’s indicative of someone who hasn’t grown up yet.

Juno states, somewhere in the middle of the film, that she’s “dealing with stuff way past [my] maturity level”. So be it. It’s just that when a character says something like that, it sounds like it’s ripped right from the screenplay’s logline and it’s more of the screenwriter’s idea of what the film should be about rather than a line somebody would actually say. The character in the film seems to recognize that she’s a product of her own screenwriter’s idea of what a sixteen-year-old girl could be. Not that I’m out prowling the streets looking to meet clever sixteen-year-olds, but I haven’t met any like Juno, which I guess makes her great as the unrealistic subject of a major motion picture.