Haut dans les airs

Up In The Air takes a strange premise that could easily feel stale or cold, especially given the perfunctory connotation that airport travel has, but succeeds as a pleasant, if forgettable, movie. Clooney is very good as a detached but thoughtful lead, and Kendrick also impressed, injecting life and uncertainty into the movie. The comedy works well and doesn't feel overdone. The way the travel scenes were cut also showed Bingham's comfort and intimate knowledge of the airport drill in a way that was fun to watch. Reitman does a good job of keeping each scene engaging and is at his best when he uses subtle social commentary. The themes of personal connection and security were amusingly turned on their head by Clooney having to teach Kendrick about maneuvering firing, as she makes the job he loves obsolete. The twist with Farmiga's character was also good and surprising, keeping the film from being a by- the- numbers rom-com. The timing and reaction to the 10 million miles was also well done. It's not a movie that's exceptional in any area and not one that will ever immediately come to mind, but it's a solid, pleasant watch with some originality.

Up In The Air is a nice movie - a good satire about work and a comedy about the price of modern business.

It looks like its going to mop up at the awards and I'm just not convinced it really deserves to.

Why? Well, it has a good performance from Clooney as the confident consultant and good directorship, but it lacks true honesty - it sacrifices real integrity for Hollywood feelings and I'm not sure i want to see the top awards going on a film-flam type of film.

Others will say this is honest and strong and entertaining (A tough act to pull off) but even though it is a nice film, well made, strong performances etc; it just somehow is a little trite. Even Clooney, who really can make anything work, ends up a little bemused. I think its a shame that films like $5 a day, which we loved, will be chiefly ignored and this will be lauded to the skies.

Fun to watch and it does have heart; but for out money it is too shallow to really deserve all the accolades coming its way.

Seeing the character that George Clooney plays in Up In The Air reminds me of George Peppard in The Carpetbaggers. If you remember Jonas Cord was flying all over creation in his private plane developing and supervising his many enterprises. Just like Clooney here, Peppard had some deep seated issues about settling down even though unlike Clooney he was already married.

Clooney has an interesting job that really keeps him moving. He works for a firm that specializes in aiding fired workers make a transition. I can testify myself that getting fired can be traumatic. In my case though my firing lasted two months and I went back to my old job and stayed there until retirement.

Clooney's boss Jason Bateman has him going all over the country. He says that he spent only about 43 days in his sparse apartment in Omaha. It really is sparse the various hotel rooms look more homey. But a woman who also spends a lot of time traveling on her job Vera Famiga and a woman who is being trained by Clooney, Anna Kendrick help him see that maybe his life and lack of commitment isn't the best thing for him.

Nor is his stated goal of gaining 10 million frequent flier miles. He spends so much time in the air that all the airline personnel on all the airlines know him on a first name basis. That's one significant accomplishment. Maybe Clooney should have taken up with a stewardess.

The characters are drawn well in this script which got one of several Academy Award nominations, in this case for adapted screenplay. Up In The Air also got Academy recognition for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Clooney, Best Actress for Famigia, and Best Supporting Actress for Kendrick. I thought Kendrick was especially good as the young lady who sees a career treadmill she doesn't like and gets off.

Up In The Air is an intelligent and modern comedy with some characters I think we can all identify with.

This film is about a man who fires people for a living. His world becomes upside down when his job is radically changed by a newly recruited young fresh graduate.

"Up in the Air" is a well made film. The plot focuses on character development and emotional changes of the characters. It is not easy to make characters interesting and memorable, but "Up in the Air" does just that. Both the characters of George Clooney and Anna Kendrick have strongly divergent attitudes and personalities, but they have great chemistry and change each other slowly but surely. How they radically shake each others core belief is engagingly told. I enjoyed watching "Up in the Air" a lot, as it tells an engaging story of self discovery.

Based on the novel by Walter Kirn, George Clooney stars as corporate downsizing expert Ryan Bingham, who is hired to help ease the transition of long-term employees to the unemployment line across the country. Taking his job very seriously and loving the 290 days away from home—the only problem with that is the 70 days at home in his empty apartment—his world gets turned upside-down when a young upstart in the company threatens to ground the company to fire people via the internet. Not standing for a change in his life, nor the chance for his life goal of total airline miles to end, ("Let's just say I have a number and I haven't hit it yet"), he goes on a mission to prove how personal his job is and how key a face to face meeting can be to talk down an emotionally unstable person and really do the victim a service in an otherwise horrible moment in his life. Along the way, he and the recent college grad, of which the boss loves due to her budget slashing game-changing idea, Natalie, played by Anna Kendrick, both find out what has been lacking in their lives and how to become better people, opening up to love, heartbreak, and the need to grow up.

Clooney's Bingham is the loner businessman whose only relationships exist from random meetings with attractive females at the multiple airports he frequents. His wallet of plastic has become his lifeblood—credit cards from airlines that accumulate his mileage, hotel status perk cards that let him cut the disgruntled travelers and go straight to the front, and numerous room keys that never seem to be thrown out, causing him to always use more than one before finally opening his hotel suite's door. Detached from his family for years as the brother that exists but cannot be counted on for anything, he contemplates whether he should, or really wants to, attend his sister's wedding—the little girl of the family and someone he should have been involved with after the passing of their father. A series of style cramping incidents for him begins with a phone call from his other sister and the request to take a cardboard cutout of the happy couple, (Melanie Lynskey and Danny McBride, in a role that might actually show some nuance for a guy that usually flies by the cuff), and photograph it in front of famous places he travels to for work "like that French gnome movie,"—I love the Amélie reference. Then comes the threat of being taken out of the air, his home for decades, in order to impersonally let go more people more efficiently; the challenge of taking Natalie on his next schedule of jobs to prove to her why the new system won't work; and the addition of a love interest in Vera Farmiga's Alex, a woman who describes herself to him with "just think of me as you with a vagina"—one of many great lines.

There is a lot of subtlety and intricate weaving of plot lines throughout the story, details and sequences that need to be seen fresh to get the full benefit of the film. What you might initially think is a witty comedy about a jerk of a guy who not only thinks he's better than everyone else, but actually is, that either finds the error of his ways or gets dropped down a peg or two, eventually becomes a tale chock full of heart and emotion. The real success story of the film is a revelatory performance from Clooney who really knocks this on out of the park. He always showed the charisma and chops to play confident and successful, but here is allowed to also branch out and express the pent-up frustration that comes with isolated loneliness, the passion one can have for a job that seems horrible, yet, when treated carefully, is a job to take seriously, and the compassion for humanity on the whole, softening enough to realize that there are people around him that need help besides his laid off strangers, help that only he can provide. The evolution he undertakes is really pretty amazing and I credit Kirn, Reitman, and Clooney for pulling it off with grace and laughter.

Every single actor is unforgettable—even the bit parts like Zach Galifianakis and especially J.K. Simmons as two corporate employees who's jobs have been eliminated. Jason Bateman is hilarious as Clooney's smug boss, fully embodying the take no crap nonchalance he made famous in "Arrested Development"; Farmiga is gorgeous and competent to be able to go toe-to-toe with Clooney in the detachment and power-hungry attitude of flying in style for half a year or more; and, if George's reinvention of character is revelatory, then Kendrick's naïve Natalie is masterful. This girl was top in her class, able to get a job in her field wherever her heart desired, yet settled for this firm specializing in firing people so as to not dirty the workers' real superior's hands. Young and confused about life in the big world of adulthood—set on a plan for marriage and children to occur as though set times on a clock—her eyes are opened to the intimacy and fragility with which a person's mental state can be affected by mere words. When you put them all together, Up in the Air resonates on so many levels; deserving of any praise and accolades to be bestowed upon it. Hilariously funny every second of the way, it is still unafraid to dig into the dark moments of life and treat them with respect and relevancy, going places you wouldn't think it would have the guts to go. You really can't say too much about the film, a top ten of the year entry for sure. Reitman proving to be a force to reckon with and Clooney that he just keeps getting better with age.