UP IN THE AIR Review

UP IN THE AIR flies high as one of the Best Pictures of the year. It’s funny, heartbreaking, and full of great memorable lines. Director Jason Reitman and scribe Sheldon Turner’s adapted screenplay hits all the right notes. It’s the movie that… would be cherished and admired for years to come. George Clooney gives one of his finest performances. Anna Kendrick is a new force to be reckon with, a best supporting material, what a revelation! UP IN THE AIR soars above every other film in 2009

From Jason Reitman, the Oscar® nominated director of “Juno,” comes a comedy called “Up in the Air” starring Oscar® winner George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a corporate hatchet man who loves his life on the road but is forced to fight for his job when his company downsizes its travel budget. He is required to spend more time at home just as he is on the cusp of a goal he’s worked toward for years: reaching ten million frequent flyer miles and just after he’s met the frequent-traveler woman of his dreams.

What I love about UP IN THE AIR is how consistent it is in making us feel like we’re constantly moving and flying, just like the life of Ryan Bingham (Clooney) himself. Even in the opening credit which gives us birds eye view of places beyond our perimeter and comfort zone. It’s an adaptation of the novel by Walter Kim, a book which unfortunately I have yet to read so I can’t make the comparison but UP IN THE AIR by itself is a superb achievement the story and the characters are connected so well, not a single minute makes you feel grounded or delayed.
Just like Reitman’s previous work, UP IN THE AIR is also a combination of drama and comedy. It’s one man who’s gotten used to being by himself, that he needs to relearn and realize what relationships mean in his life, the hard yet subtle way. You’ll be entertained at Reitman’s focus on frequent flyer miles, traveling bags, which rental service is better than the other, there’s a few excellent cinematic set pieces here including a shot of Clooney staring at the Destination board that to me shows a man beholding all his options that he’s earned but is confused as to what he should be doing. For those of you who may not have been a fan of Juno, let me just say that Jason Reitman, the director of Thank You For Smoking, has returned.

To me, George Clooney has always been one of those actors that I think could speak up a bit and I mean that in a literal way. He likes to keep the tone of his voice so calm, he sounds like he just woke up after a long night of heavy sleep. But it works for the character Ryan Bingham who finds it so comfortable being who he is, when others try to talk some sense into him, he just shakes them off calmly by saying everything is fine. There’s no Al Pacino’s yelling or siblings physically hitting him due to negligence as what Evan Rachel Woods did to Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, George Clooney plays it with a certain level of solitude. When he receives a wake up call of his own, a rebirth from the girl that he cares about, it’s as if he’s taking his own bitter medicine. It’s like he just got fired! But unlike some employees he has to deal with, he finds himself sitting in that fateful chair now and after a while he knows exactly what to do and where he belongs. You sympathize with him because after all these years, traveling is all he knows, it has become his home.

I can’t say enough to praise Anna Kendrick, this young actress not only is able to go toe to toe with Clooney, she’s full of energy, rage and the skills of outsmarting you and expressing her raw emotion when things get overwhelming. What a wonderful, brilliant actress, she doesn’t do it over the top,… just the right mark.
It’s a movie about priorities. Bingham thinks his sole purpose of reaching 10 million miles would give him the rank and happiness he deserves. He stubbornly chooses not to follow the patterns, he doesn’t even believe in marriage because that 10 million miles goal is what he thinks would make him be more than just the rest of the people in his life.
I’m not going to spoil too much but he has his motivational speech about what to put in his backpack and at first he doesn’t even mention a thing about relationship and when he does, it’s either a negative comment or he’s speechless like he finally gets the idea of what’s really important.
UP IN THE AIR may be predictable, I’m not saying you can’t see the ending from miles away. But what makes it stand out is its ability to give you that wake up call, that the key to happiness is so much as what we have set for ourselves as it is about making human connection with the people who are dear to us. Don’t treat them as nothing but some kind of parentheses because you wouldn’t want to be treated the same way in return.

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