Never hitting the Mile High Club

Up in the Air
Starring: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick
Director: Jason Reitman
Rating: ** (out of 5)

Summary: Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) flies from city to city being the bearer of bad news. Hired by companies to fire their employees, he's close to acquiring 10 million airmiles and becoming part of an exclusive club. However, his perfect lifestyle comes under threat when his company plan to ground him and turn his role into a desk job...

Jason Reitman's follow up to Juno is missing the one thing that movie had: Soul.

The characters in Up in the Air are unlikeable, cynical arseholes for the majority of the time - even more so than I am. It's like spending two hours with Jason Bateman's Juno character whilst he tells you how awful his life is and lights Cuban cigars with £50 notes, all the while picking his teeth with a passport photo of his beautiful wife. In summary, bloody irritating.

Up in the Air seems to have attracted critical acclaim because of its timely unemployment subject matter and George Clooney's apparently revelatory performance. However, one of those can be seen as a pure plot device and coincidence whilst the other can be seen as pure, Hollywood bullshit churned out by the hypemill 3000 (Acme patent pending). Clooney is simply Clooney, nothing more and nothing less. Holding back on the Just for Men for a month or two and attempting to cry whilst looking like the before subject in a laxative ad does not make you Oscar worthy. Clooney is not a bad actor, but he is simply coasting in this movie, and is not pushed like David O Russell pushed him in Three Kings for example - which is still his best performance in my opinion.

The plus points, which are few and far between, are the two female leads, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick. Despite the fact that Reitman and Turner's script paints them as a cliched cold femme fatale and a weak and neurotic damsel in distress, they give honest performances, filling out underwritten support roles with gusto.

The movie was a disappointment, unsure of itself and guided by a main protagonist who, despite the amount of soul searching and puppy dog looks, deserves a happy ending about as much as Hitler in Triumph of the Will. Jason Reitman and George Clooney can and must do better.