Apologies are in order: This review was written for posting on Dec. 11, the day the movie opened. Somewhere along the way, a glitch appeared in cyberspace and the review remained in the files. It's three weeks since the opening, but opinions remain intact.
Despite all the hoop-la and hi-de-ho that have surrounded it, "Up in the Air," which opens here today, is a good movie. But in my opinion, it is definitely not a great movie, despite the high praise it has received and all the Oscar buzz it seems to have created. Good entertainment, fine performances from George Clooney and Vera Farmiga, many laughs, but a lightweight in terms of serious drama or great comedy, and a story that runs out of gas before the end is reached.
And maybe its good humor, light-heartedness and laughs are a reason for its success, given the large number of depressing films that will surround us this holiday season and into the Academy Award race. "Precious," "The Messenger" and "The Hurt Locker," just to name a few, are excellent films, but their subject matter is painful, not entertaining. Perhaps in a scary economy and with high unemployment, "Up in the Air" provides the opportunity to look at someone worse off than we are, with the glee that replaces the horror when someone else takes the bullet we were afraid was aimed at us.
Clooney portrays Ryan Bingham, a creation of the modern corporate structure. Executives don't want to fire people, they want to hire people to fire people, and someone who lives for perks like first-class airline seats, upgraded hotel rooms and fancy rental cars is the perfect person to do the dirty work. Bingham boasts he's on the road more than 300 nights a year, and he wears his six figures' worth of frequent flier miles as if they were a security blanket.
And then he meets Farmiga, as Alex Goran, who has a similar successful job, a similar supercilious attitude and a similar sexual success rate, whether she's sending a loyal employee off to a rocking chair or bedding someone she considers her equal, like Bingham.
The interplay between Clooney and Farmiga is the high spot of the movie; she is as callous as he. They play off one another in admirable style, and to Clooney's credit, he stands back and is comfortable whenever she is the dominant character in a scene. And speaking of characters, Anna Kendrick is excellent as a fellow-firing line sharpshooter who becomes a threat to the whiz kid himself.
Jason Reitman directs admirably, but the screenplay that he and Sheldon Turner wrote, based on Walter Kirn's novel, flattens out toward the end, when Clooney and Farmiga attend a wedding of Clooney's younger sister, and it limps badly to the final credits.
A lot of it was shot in St. Louis, with scenes at Lambert Field, where there were so few passengers they didn't get in the way, and around town at sites like the Bevo Mill, the Hilton Hotel at the ballpark and others that bring cries of, "Look, it's. . . ."
A good movie; just not a great one.
"Up in the Air" at multiple locations
–Joe
Comments
2 responses
Joe,
I wondered what happened to your review of Up in the Air. I generally agree with your assessment. Since your review The National Board of Review and the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association have named it the best picture of 2009. It has received eight Broadcast Film Critics Association nominations, six Golden Globe nominations and three Screen Actors Guild nominations.
Dan Dassow
Agree with you completely, Joe.
We saw the movie yesterday. It was entertaining, and we laughed a bit, but my husband figured out where the limping ending was going ahead of time, and we wonder what all the awards are about.
My kvetch: the previews were all blood and gore movies with the sound blasting at us (at the Moolah). I should have exited to the lobby until the movie started. p.j.