[PLEASUREMAN]

[Spoiler note: Up in the Air contains a plot twist that is discussed below.]

The problem a movie like Up in the Air faces is being too predictable; once you've seen the trailer you've seen almost the entire movie, which is about a business traveler (Clooney) who spends most of his time flying from city to city. His philosophy appears to be perfectly suited to this lifestyle, and on the side he gives motivational speeches imploring people to abandon the weight of things and relationships they don't really need. Travel light, keep moving. Manage your life with Japanese efficiency. Keep your baggage to an absolute minimum.

Predictably, Clooney meets a woman (Vera Farmiga) who seems to offer him something more than his travel-size philosophy can provide. At first just a hotel lounge hook-up, as they arrange future airport terminal meetings their chemistry leads to an unusual relationship that puts the central dilemma to Clooney's character. Meanwhile, at the home office Clooney's boss informs him that the company is changing direction. Instead of sending representatives across the country (the service they provide to other businesses is handling employee layoffs), the company will use webcam-equipped terminals and a call center staffed with libarts grads who follow "workflows". No travel expenses, just a few T1 lines.

After Clooney objects, his company (predictably) agrees to send him back out with Anna Kendrick, the mastermind of the new strategy, in tow. Predictably, Kendrick is a callow yuppie exec who doesn't see what Clooney's human touch and experience at his job brings to the task of laying people off. But after a few tough interactions with distraught employees in which she predictably says the wrong thing, she predictably realizes that firing people over the Internet is messier than she thought.

Then the plot twist. Following a minor family crisis, Clooney comes to feel that his budding relationship with Farmiga is too important to leave as a casual fling. In one of those dramatic Hollywood moments, he exits in the middle of one of his motivational speeches to grab the next plane to Chicago and shows up on Farmiga's doorstep. Farmiga answers the doorbell, and we see her kids run up the stairs behind her, and hear her husband's voice, and at once realize that she's not like Clooney at all--her travel flings have been an escape from real life, not her actual real life. She already has the connections and family and love that Clooney was hoping to find with her.

Devastated, Clooney staggers back into the empty rhythm of his travel-oriented lifestyle. His company's project to replace Clooney with a call center drone collapses, Kendrick resigns following the suicide of a laid off employee, and we leave Clooney as he stares up at a departure board, scanning his next flight.

Despite some affecting moments, Up in the Air never develops Clooney's character well enough to give him a completed arc, which is perhaps why at the end his situation appears completely unresolved. Why does he enjoy traveling? Why has he until now spurned intimate connections? If he hates returning to the home office in Omaha (and who wouldn't?), why doesn't he find a similar travel-oriented job in another city?

Kendrick meanwhile remains a thoroughly unlikeable character from first to last, so when the movie tries to soften her with a breakup and then career crisis following the suicide, the effort fails. Why does Clooney write her a glowing recommendation, even after her experiences with him did nothing to change her plan to replace human representatives with call centers? (Do companies really hire on the basis of adulatory references? It seems so in movies.) The movie says little about the shift towards atomized employment as represented by call centers staffed by low paid, untrained workers, despite it providing a major element of the story. The protagonist himself offers no reflections on the dramatically changed nature of air travel over the past decade (or longer trends going back 30 years).

In the end the story feels solely developed around a single actor, with some minimalist drama and light comedy thrown in for relief, but with nothing much to observe or say. In short, once you've seen the trailer you've seen almost the entire movie.

[PLEASUREMAN]

As a side note, there is something wrong with all of Jason Reitman's movies. Thank You For Smoking, Juno, and Up in the Air all feature protagonists who seem stuck in a pose.

[PRCalDude]

Someone jog my memory here. Has Clooney ever been in a good movie? Every time I hear of another Clooney film coming out, I think "Great, another sucky film where George Clooney has a smug look on his face."

[PLEASUREMAN]

PRCalDude, 30 December 2009 - 09:36 PM:

Someone jog my memory here. Has Clooney ever been in a good movie? Every time I hear of another Clooney film coming out, I think "Great, another sucky film where George Clooney has a smug look on his face."

you might actually like this film then if only for the final moments when Clooney looks like someone punched him in the gut

Clooney like Alec Baldwin has wasted a lot of time trying to play likeable good guys, hopefully he'll figure out like Baldwin that he makes a much better heel...he's also getting near his sell-by date for romantic lead, unless it's in some "old people in love" rom-com

he's been in way too many terrible movies, the Ocean flicks salvaged his career and his liberal baiting movies have kept him in good stead with Hollywood PTB

[rho]

The first Ocean's movie was pretty good. Better than the original, I think, but maybe because the original was too Rat-Packy for it's own good.

I haven't been into a movie theater in a long time. Are there any decent movies out at all? Nothing I've seen advertised has driven me to go see it on the big screen. I'm always, "no, I think I'll drink Sterno and play with myself instead."

[PLEASUREMAN]

I might go see It's Complicated. Couples Retreat is showing at the dollar theater, and I am always up for Vince Vaughn even at his most phoned in.

Scorsese's next movie, due out in a few months, looks like it will really suck. I guess it's time for one of those. Hoping that Nolan's Inception is worthwhile, that is coming this summer.