Movie Summary of Up In The Air by Michael the Moviegoer.
UP IN THE AIR = ***1/2
“Clooney In First Class”
On his way to earning the super-elite status of 10 million frequent flyer miles, George Clooney plays a man who spends his entire life on the road and constantly in motion. While he never misses a flight connection, he seems unable to connect to any other human being in his life.
Clooney’s job is to fire people. Companies hire him as a sort of terminator, to fire employees with a short, smug, self-help speech about how the end of their jobs can be the start of something better in their lives.
In his travels, he often crosses paths with Vera Farmiga, a woman with a similar unsettled lifestyle who loves the occasional intimacy a long-distance relationship can offer with no strings attached.
But Clooney’s ideal lifestyle is threatened when his company hires a young girl who wants to take him off the road and sit him down in front of a computer to fire people over the internet. The girl is played by Anna Kendrick in a career-launching role that practically steals every scene away from Clooney.
Directed by Jason Reitman following his award-winning “Juno”, expect this screenplay to score him an Oscar. It’s smart and funny and filled with intelligent conversations between the three main characters who each seem to have vastly different opinions on life and love. In a way, each are experiencing a mid-life crisis.
This is one of the finest performances of George Clooney’s career. He gives his character the sophistication of “Michael Clayton” while also exposing the more vulnerable human side we saw in his Oscar-winning performance in “Syriana”.
A perfect piece of entertainment that also has a brain, “Up In The Air” is a first-class act.
DVD Double Feature: It’s starting to look as though Jason Reitman is becoming a better filmmaker than his dad Ivan simply by taking the more serious approach to comedy. You’ve probably seen “Juno”, but you may have missed his excellent “Thank You For Smoking” starring Aaron Eckhart as a spin-doctor for the tobacco industry. This is a hilarious, poltically incorrect comedy that will have you laughing until you cough up a lung.
Michael The Moviegoer
