Foreword: Up in the Air is certainly not a horror film. Yet, I felt so strongly against it that I needed to go against the grain with this review and try to unbalance the overwhelming critical appreciation of this weak bourgeois film.
I didn't know anything about Up in the Air before I went in to see it, except that it was Jason Reitman's follow-up to the marvelous Juno and an Academy Award prospect. Naively enough, I thought I was in for another uplifting comedy about life and humanity. Of course, I was suspicious about the airport setting, which is hardly a suitable background for a character-based story, but I didn't worry too much, considering the comic potential of George Clooney and half-hoping to see Ellen Page or Michael Cera pop out of the scenery and quip a soulful joke. Thing is, I should've acted on my hunch and steered clear of this infuriating mess. But then again, I never could've expected such a dreadful, shallow and flawed piece of filmmaking from director Reitman. That is, I couldn't have expected him to turn his vest in such a way as to virtually annihilite everything he had done with Juno.
Up in the Air is about a man, a despicable man with a back-stabbing rat's smile. A man whose job it is to fly around the country, firing various office workers in the stead of their respective bosses. Twisted enough? A man who enjoys what he does for a living, reveling in the cash he derives from what is essentially a non-job (i.e. an intermediary job that is basically useless), prancing around in fashionable Italian suits with an infuriating smile stuck to his rat's face, a man free of the slighest hint of ethical self-appraisal. And we're supposed to root for that guy, we the people? Is it me who's crazy or isn't the protagonist of a standard Hollywood film supposed to be sympathetic? Now, last time I checked, cinema was still a popular medium. And last time I checked, it was the average movie-going Joes who were getting fired from their jobs. Then why are we giving this threatened majority a bourgeois protagonist who is morally bankrupt, totally unproductive (from a realistic standpoint), and without any ties to anything remotely significant (such as family, friends, love or even a single anthropocentric setting)?
Personnally, I had to fire three people in my life, all three at the same time, and I can say without the shadow of a doubt that it was the single worst thing I ever did. Not because it gave my employees a chance to vent their frustrations on me, but because it broke my heart and made me feel like a monster. It wasn't my decision to fire them, it was my boss'. My role in this shady operation was that of a despicable yes-man, cleaning out some motherfucker's dirty laundry as if it were my own, not unlike that gloomy George Clooney character from Up in the Air. Both he and this former self of mine are pawns in a sick game of which they care only to see the chips right in front of them. Of the three puzzled guys in front of me at the time, one of them started crying, and he kept on doing so while I clumsily invoked bullshit arguments to justify what was basically a random, "let's make an example of them" firing. Call me weak, call me whatever you will, but my heart broke into bits when he finally extended his hand towards mine and said: "I hope to see you again... under more auspicious skies". So, when I see Clooney with a clear conscience, grinning a self-satisfied smile while depriving a family man of his livelihood, I feel like leaping across the screen and fuckin' mauling him! And I feel that anybody with half a conscience should share this feeling with me.
As if this weren't enough, we are also treated to the female counterpart of George Clooney's character, a boring plane traveler such as himself whom I am tempted to nominate as Most Unattractive Female Character of All Times (conveniently enough, she is played by Vera Farmiga...). The two of them meet in the lobby of an hotel, then take the film on a spiralling ride toward mediocrity. They exchange platitudes, then become enamored with each other's wallet (I'm not kidding!), have casual sex, exchange some more platitudes, then compare their "busy" schedules on some fashionable electronic agendas in order to fit in some more casual sex. Wow! Ain't love grand? Seriously, there are many more involving romances in any given soap opera. On the other hand, if you're one of those people for whom fidelity cards are a turn-on, then I promise you a big fat hard-on while you watch this painful, sorry display of what love has become at the threshold of the new millenium.
Narratively speaking, Clooney and Farmiga's "characters" are more like non-characters, or at the most, secondary characters. They have almost no background, no quirks, no personnality and no real ties to anybody in the diegetic world. They are merely savvy bullshitters (or sophism-spewing uglies), and thus are much closer to robots than to actual human beings, unlike Anna Kendrick's character who is much rounder, and able to show emotion. Making Kendrick's character secondary to Clooney's and Farmiga's is not just a little mistake, it's a major flaw that rattles the very foundations of the film. From where I stand, being a graduate film scholar, I can tell you this: the screenplay for Up in the Air would hardly get a passing grade in Screenwriting 101 on account of its unsympathetic, flat protagonist. Give it ten seconds of thought and rethink the film as a real Juno follow-up, with the young female as protagonist and the pathetic professional couple as cautionary entity. Then, and only then have you got an Oscar contender. But as it stands, Up in the Air is an offensive bourgeois film, the likes of which was reason for cinema to reinvent itself during the 1960s. Whereas Juno was a film about ordinary (middle-class) people dealing with real moral issues (regarding love, sharing and finding one's place within society), Up in the Air merely chronicles the adolescent antics of a robot who lives solely for a dream which is shallowest of all (collecting frequent flyer miles). This is pure futility, especially considering the drama that unfolds in the background, unnoticed by the legions of brainwashed Clooney fans.
Truth be told, Up in the Air's is really a poisonous stance on the current economic crisis, presenting it like a mild annoyance to bourgeois assholes and vastly underplaying the personal dramas of many tertiary characters who are rounder than Clooney's such as J.K. Simmons' who, after x years of loyal services to an ungrateful company is terminated and told by the outsider doing so that he is a loser! At that point, I hoped Simmons would leap over the table and puncture Clooney's jugular, which, to my most utter dismay, failed to materialize. That said, I can't count with my two hands the number of times I wished Clooney's character would suffer a gory demise, paramount of which is when he suavely brushes aside his responsibility in the murder of a black executive and returns to work with all the poise in the world. Surprisingly enough, Up in the Air seems like Reitman's disavowal of Juno's humanism. A case in point is the scene where Kendrick breaks down in tears in the middle of a hotel lobby. The two rotten fuckers accompanying her then exchange condescending glances, quietly saying: "What a silly tart..."and in the end, Kendrick's outburst of humanity is seen merely as a comical interlude. All of this is proof that Reitman is far from an auteur and more of a jobber, that is an interchangeable cogwheel in a sausage-making Hollywoodian machine.
In the end, what the film's failure boils down to is a basic, but devastating structural flaw. After all, the first imperative of screenwriting is to present a round, sympathetic character as protagonist. Here, it should've been Anna Kendrick's. Had it been, with Clooney's and Farmiga's as satellite characters, sort of a cautionary couple representing the lowest refuge of a dead humanity, Up in the Air could've been a great film. But I guess the producers didn't want to jeopardize Clooney's marquee value by gambling on lovely, but inexperienced Kendrick. By acting in such a conservative, gutless way, they left the film with a critical weakness, which they basically "bought" off by emphasizing Clooney's commanding performance and by getting award nominations which the film is completely undeserving of. A nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay? What? It should get a Razzie, for fuck's sake!
0,5/5 The epitome of bourgeois cinema: a film that pushes real people beyond the margins of two rich non-characters' lives of luxury. Half a star for Anna Kendrick.
I didn't know anything about Up in the Air before I went in to see it, except that it was Jason Reitman's follow-up to the marvelous Juno and an Academy Award prospect. Naively enough, I thought I was in for another uplifting comedy about life and humanity. Of course, I was suspicious about the airport setting, which is hardly a suitable background for a character-based story, but I didn't worry too much, considering the comic potential of George Clooney and half-hoping to see Ellen Page or Michael Cera pop out of the scenery and quip a soulful joke. Thing is, I should've acted on my hunch and steered clear of this infuriating mess. But then again, I never could've expected such a dreadful, shallow and flawed piece of filmmaking from director Reitman. That is, I couldn't have expected him to turn his vest in such a way as to virtually annihilite everything he had done with Juno.
Up in the Air is about a man, a despicable man with a back-stabbing rat's smile. A man whose job it is to fly around the country, firing various office workers in the stead of their respective bosses. Twisted enough? A man who enjoys what he does for a living, reveling in the cash he derives from what is essentially a non-job (i.e. an intermediary job that is basically useless), prancing around in fashionable Italian suits with an infuriating smile stuck to his rat's face, a man free of the slighest hint of ethical self-appraisal. And we're supposed to root for that guy, we the people? Is it me who's crazy or isn't the protagonist of a standard Hollywood film supposed to be sympathetic? Now, last time I checked, cinema was still a popular medium. And last time I checked, it was the average movie-going Joes who were getting fired from their jobs. Then why are we giving this threatened majority a bourgeois protagonist who is morally bankrupt, totally unproductive (from a realistic standpoint), and without any ties to anything remotely significant (such as family, friends, love or even a single anthropocentric setting)?
Personnally, I had to fire three people in my life, all three at the same time, and I can say without the shadow of a doubt that it was the single worst thing I ever did. Not because it gave my employees a chance to vent their frustrations on me, but because it broke my heart and made me feel like a monster. It wasn't my decision to fire them, it was my boss'. My role in this shady operation was that of a despicable yes-man, cleaning out some motherfucker's dirty laundry as if it were my own, not unlike that gloomy George Clooney character from Up in the Air. Both he and this former self of mine are pawns in a sick game of which they care only to see the chips right in front of them. Of the three puzzled guys in front of me at the time, one of them started crying, and he kept on doing so while I clumsily invoked bullshit arguments to justify what was basically a random, "let's make an example of them" firing. Call me weak, call me whatever you will, but my heart broke into bits when he finally extended his hand towards mine and said: "I hope to see you again... under more auspicious skies". So, when I see Clooney with a clear conscience, grinning a self-satisfied smile while depriving a family man of his livelihood, I feel like leaping across the screen and fuckin' mauling him! And I feel that anybody with half a conscience should share this feeling with me.
As if this weren't enough, we are also treated to the female counterpart of George Clooney's character, a boring plane traveler such as himself whom I am tempted to nominate as Most Unattractive Female Character of All Times (conveniently enough, she is played by Vera Farmiga...). The two of them meet in the lobby of an hotel, then take the film on a spiralling ride toward mediocrity. They exchange platitudes, then become enamored with each other's wallet (I'm not kidding!), have casual sex, exchange some more platitudes, then compare their "busy" schedules on some fashionable electronic agendas in order to fit in some more casual sex. Wow! Ain't love grand? Seriously, there are many more involving romances in any given soap opera. On the other hand, if you're one of those people for whom fidelity cards are a turn-on, then I promise you a big fat hard-on while you watch this painful, sorry display of what love has become at the threshold of the new millenium.
Narratively speaking, Clooney and Farmiga's "characters" are more like non-characters, or at the most, secondary characters. They have almost no background, no quirks, no personnality and no real ties to anybody in the diegetic world. They are merely savvy bullshitters (or sophism-spewing uglies), and thus are much closer to robots than to actual human beings, unlike Anna Kendrick's character who is much rounder, and able to show emotion. Making Kendrick's character secondary to Clooney's and Farmiga's is not just a little mistake, it's a major flaw that rattles the very foundations of the film. From where I stand, being a graduate film scholar, I can tell you this: the screenplay for Up in the Air would hardly get a passing grade in Screenwriting 101 on account of its unsympathetic, flat protagonist. Give it ten seconds of thought and rethink the film as a real Juno follow-up, with the young female as protagonist and the pathetic professional couple as cautionary entity. Then, and only then have you got an Oscar contender. But as it stands, Up in the Air is an offensive bourgeois film, the likes of which was reason for cinema to reinvent itself during the 1960s. Whereas Juno was a film about ordinary (middle-class) people dealing with real moral issues (regarding love, sharing and finding one's place within society), Up in the Air merely chronicles the adolescent antics of a robot who lives solely for a dream which is shallowest of all (collecting frequent flyer miles). This is pure futility, especially considering the drama that unfolds in the background, unnoticed by the legions of brainwashed Clooney fans.
Truth be told, Up in the Air's is really a poisonous stance on the current economic crisis, presenting it like a mild annoyance to bourgeois assholes and vastly underplaying the personal dramas of many tertiary characters who are rounder than Clooney's such as J.K. Simmons' who, after x years of loyal services to an ungrateful company is terminated and told by the outsider doing so that he is a loser! At that point, I hoped Simmons would leap over the table and puncture Clooney's jugular, which, to my most utter dismay, failed to materialize. That said, I can't count with my two hands the number of times I wished Clooney's character would suffer a gory demise, paramount of which is when he suavely brushes aside his responsibility in the murder of a black executive and returns to work with all the poise in the world. Surprisingly enough, Up in the Air seems like Reitman's disavowal of Juno's humanism. A case in point is the scene where Kendrick breaks down in tears in the middle of a hotel lobby. The two rotten fuckers accompanying her then exchange condescending glances, quietly saying: "What a silly tart..."and in the end, Kendrick's outburst of humanity is seen merely as a comical interlude. All of this is proof that Reitman is far from an auteur and more of a jobber, that is an interchangeable cogwheel in a sausage-making Hollywoodian machine.
In the end, what the film's failure boils down to is a basic, but devastating structural flaw. After all, the first imperative of screenwriting is to present a round, sympathetic character as protagonist. Here, it should've been Anna Kendrick's. Had it been, with Clooney's and Farmiga's as satellite characters, sort of a cautionary couple representing the lowest refuge of a dead humanity, Up in the Air could've been a great film. But I guess the producers didn't want to jeopardize Clooney's marquee value by gambling on lovely, but inexperienced Kendrick. By acting in such a conservative, gutless way, they left the film with a critical weakness, which they basically "bought" off by emphasizing Clooney's commanding performance and by getting award nominations which the film is completely undeserving of. A nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay? What? It should get a Razzie, for fuck's sake!
0,5/5 The epitome of bourgeois cinema: a film that pushes real people beyond the margins of two rich non-characters' lives of luxury. Half a star for Anna Kendrick.
