Starring: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, Jason Bateman, Amy Morton

Directed by: Jason Reitman

Paramount

The Official Site of Up In The Air

Discuss Up In The Air on the boards!

Riding into work on Friday I caught in the reflection of the train window a picture of George Clooney staring into the clouds. It was reversed from a paper that the man in front of me was reading featuring an early review of Up in The Air, the new film from Jason Reitman (Juno, Thank You For Smoking) about a frequent flyer coming back to Earth. I tried fruitlessly to make out a couple reflected sentences of praise but kept coming back to the half page image of the film’s star lost in… something. His gaze promised something unexpected, something poignant, something significant and I’d expect nothing less from the people involved.

Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a corporate axe man flying across the country lining up and laying off the victims of our great recession. He’s comfortable with his work. He believes it serves a purpose and that he’s good not at ruining someone’s life but at transitioning them through a very difficult time in their lives. He’s become as comfortable with his way of life as much as his role in it. He’s sacrificed family and home for a new town every night and a collection of rental car and hotel VIP cards.

Ryan conducts seminars encouraging crowds to fill their metaphorical backpacks with the things in their life and then burn them. The perfect message of liberation and freedom from a man with no home, no family and a frequent flyer account approaching 10,000,000 miles.

The backpack idea is… okay. It’s conceived as one of those uniquely clever takes on life to make audiences look at the world differently. The kind of high concept, instantly charming devices that Cameron Crowe effortlessly births but the backpack is hardly as effective as a boom box overhead or a well-timed Elton John song.

I tried to do it. I tried to feel the straps on my shoulders and fill the backpack with my possessions, my family, my hopes, my dreams… with the weight of my life. But as hard as I tried I couldn’t put myself in the place of someone that needed to be freed of those “burdens�. I’d be foolish though not to recognize that this message is geared more at people who’ve just lost their jobs and are feeling the true weight of the world. People like the actual recently fired people that Reitman featured in the film - A method of getting genuine reactions from real people suffering through this very real problem.

For those of us not feeling the weight, the movie may bring with it less of an impact because if we don’t understand our debonair hero then how can we really empathize with his dilemma let alone his impending transformation?

Two women enter Ryan’s life. One that reignites his heart (libido) and one that grounds his flights with technology and charts of “unnecessary expenses�. Vera Farmiga is electric as Alex, a fellow traveler that shares Ryan’s joy of escape. We’ve seen her for years playing this part but never so well, even amongst the big boys in Scorsese’s Departed. Ryan is enchanted by her and we’re in the passenger’s seat right there with him.

Anna Kendrick plays Natalie, a young upstart that has revolutionized the firing business and is taking away not just the human connection but everything Ryan loves about his job. Her journey is an interesting one. By the time her character departs the movie you may be debating which story you want to follow.

Both women have a hand in that transformation, in having Ryan revaluate himself and what comes next. That’s what he was looking at in the reflected newspaper image. I mean, sure he was literally looking at the sky or a destination board or the size of his giant backpack, but to me he was looking beyond the obvious towards the fear and potential of an uncharted future.

Up In The Air, sadly, is dangerously predictable. That the new woman in Ryan’s life might melt his bachelor heart or how his compulsive hunt for 10,000,000 miles might shift unexpectedly is anything but unexpected. But I’m not sure it matters because of how well the tale is told. Air is one of those films that, with lesser talent, could have been a forgettable flight but through the strength of performance, direction, tight editing and bouncy score, it is a predictable trip worth booking.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10 - I mentioned Cameron Crowe in the review. I’m a huge fan of his work but he, and even someone like Judd Apatow, would do well to take a lesson from Reitman and his editing team. Crowe tends to over do it; to explain every detail of his films instead of letting the audience fill in the blank. With Up In The Air I think Reitman has showed a remarkable maturity in letting the story and characters tell the story instead of dictate it.

Up In The Air feels very much like Jerry Maguire without Jerry debating if he loves the kid more than the mom (I feel like a lot of us block that out). Up In The Air’s trip to Ryan’s hometown, were it directed by Apatow, would have been 2/3rds of the film and featured random conversations about Mothera and Kung Fu. Reitman tells a tight little tale and still gives us genuine characters and genuine emotion. It’s a perfect example of less being more and it’s the reason I rated the movie as high as I did.

It still got a lower score than Knowing so what do I know?

Yes, and here’s why. I watch Juno everyday. Every workday anyway but 5 days a week is still pretty impressive. The fine print is that I don’t watch the entire film. During my lunch break as I’m face-attacking a cheeseburger I’ll flip open my ipod and watch 10-15 minutes of Juno – the only movie I ever bothered to put on the damn thing. I’ve done this for about 5 months so I’ve made my way through the film more than a few times now.

What’s nice about the condensed sessions is that I get to focus on specific scenes and really analyze intent, performances, soundtrack, you name it. This is still a movie I enjoy immensely but I’ve begun to study why and the results are enormously satisfying. I would welcome the chance to do that with Reitman’s latest.

So… is this joke to ambiguous? I mean more so than that one for 2012 a few weeks ago? For some reason I got paranoid while coloring it that it wasn’t specific enough, that kids playing like kids play versus kids playing like adults was suddenly so heady. Would it be better or worse if one of the kids stabbed the Grimace with the airplane in the last panel?