Up in the Air (2009)

George Clooney does some really awkward dance moves, the creepy stalker chick from Two and Half Men marries the disabled war veteran who beat up Robert Downey Jr in Due Date, and lots of hardworking Americans get canned.

Up in the Air is a 2009 movie directed by Jason Reitman and starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Jason Bateman.

Despite being a George Clooney fan I avoided this film for a long time because I thought it was the type of movie I despise – the sort of film The Simpsons makes fun of; films about “people coming to terms with things.”

I knew the general gist – Clooney plays a man whose job (a corporate asshole hired by employers to fire people) keeps him travelling. He lives out of a suitcase, barely sees his sisters and has no attachments besides a mutually beneficial loyalty to his boss (a wonderfully sleazy Jason Bateman). I figured it was about Clooney’s character finally ‘finding his feet’ and the woman of his dreams yadda yadda.

And for the most part that’s what this film is. It’s predictable, sometimes corny, rarely laugh-out-loud funny, but watchable due to Clooney and Vera Farmiga, who plays Alex; a woman seemingly as vacuous as Clooney with whom he begins a casual relationship.

But then it redeems itself at the end when it has Clooney doing the ‘coming to terms with things’ moment – showing up on Alex's doorstep. It’s set up like a happy ever after moment but instead he’s greeted with the cold reality that she is married with kids and has been lying to him.
I especially like the way she essentially ‘fires’ him in the same passive aggressive way he’s been firing people throughout the film.

The film has a really obvious metaphor that I would normally pretentiously sneer at, but this time it actually made me laugh (maybe it was the sleep medication I was on – which clearly wasn’t working). After spruiking idiotic self-help seminars on how to ‘empty the backpack’ of your life – free yourself from the baggage of friends, family, and possessions – Clooney’s character is forced to carry around a cheesy cardboard cut-out of his sister and her fiancé that juts out of his carefully packed carry on suitcase (she’s asked him to take lame tourist selfies with it at various landmarks he visits on his travels). The metaphor is as subtle as a knee to the groin, but director Jason Reitman somehow makes it work. I guess growing up with Ivan Reitman as your dad would instil a certain deftness at juggling sentimentality and comedy.

What I liked most about the film was that Clooney’s character essentially doesn’t change. His character arc is a full 360 – he ends the film the way he began; groundless and happy to be. The film essentially employs the rationale that made Seinfeld so great – the philosophy that good comedy should have ‘no hugging and no learning’. Works for me. Two sleep-deprived hours well spent.