Up In The Air
Clever, Suave and Sophisticated - briansmith
Directed by Jason Reitman of Juno and Thank You For Smoking fame, Up In The Air is an intriguing satire. George Clooney is a corporate downsizing expert who is at his happiest sitting in first class above the clouds rather than dealing with the harsh realities of frienships and families below. Preferring to live out of rented accomodation rather than facing the commitment of settling down.
On his travels he meets Alex (Vera Farmiga) and they relish their mutual obsession for air miles, travel cards, credit cards and their lust for each other. Life couldn't be better for Clooney until his company employ college graduate Natalie played by Anna Kendrick. She has an ingenius new video conferencing system for enforcing redundancies which if successful will keep Clooney out of the air and result in a major loss of air miles. As a result he sets out to prove the new system wrong and challenges Kendrick to join him on one of his cross country downsizing ventures. The result is a vicious and hysterical journey. Kendrick is exhilirating as the deadpan, uptight Natalie. She is appalled my Clooney's absolute lack of interest in settling down with the right person as she has her entire future mapped out.
The more time they spend with each other the more disheartened she gets with the realities of her profession and the more he sees the downfalls to his way of life. His relationship/arrangement with Farmiga gets tested in lieu of his new found life awareness and a trip home to his sisters wedding make him deal with a whole bunch of unfamiliar feelings.
I cannot commend the screenplay enough. It's clever, suave and sophisticated and all the characters are ideally cast - especially Anna Kendrick and the movie's ending doesn't disappoint. Clooney doesn't have to step out of 2nd gear for this role. This is not a criticism!
Up In The Air is about as polished a movie as you'll see all year.
Review published on the 25 January 2010 16:43
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