perceptive comedy/drama about human relations

Rating: 8/10 (13 January 2010)

Sometimes karma can be a real b***h. Take Ryan Bingham, who works for a company that specializes in firing other companies' employees. Yet, despite the harshness of what he's paid to do, Ryan genuinely loves his job and the confirmed-bachelor lifestyle it allows him to lead. He loves being away from home 270 days out of the year. He loves flying on planes - to the point where he's about to crack the magical 10 million-mile mark on his Frequent Flyer plan. He even loves the place he officially calls home: a sterile motel room in Omaha where he barely gets time to shower and shave and unpack his bags before heading off to another destination.
The problem is that all these business trips are placing an onerous financial burden on the company. The solution the bigwigs have come up with is to simply remove the human-contact element from the firing process altogether and replace it with the impersonality of the dreaded teleconference. For Ryan, this means that his days of flying the friendly skies may well be numbered. Before that happens, however, Ryan is determined to make one last stand with his boss, agreeing to take Natalie Keener, the young woman who came up with the idea, on the road with him to demonstrate just how crucially important the "personal-touch" can be when terminating an employee. Meanwhile, despite his avowals about how much he loves the bachelor life, a crack in his armor may be starting to show, for Ryan may in fact be falling for Alex, a 30-something fellow-traveler he meets in a bar one night and with whom he begins an initially "casual," typically no-strings-attached romance. But will it stay that way?
"Up in the Air" is the latest work by Jason Reitman, the director who gave us "Thank You for Smoking" and "Juno" in recent years. Like those earlier efforts, "Up in the Air" is a subtle, thought-provoking comedy/drama that explores not only the complexities of romance and human relationships but the destructive effect rampant corporate downsizing has on the shell-shocked individuals who are its victims and on the fabric of society as a whole.
Reitman is scrupulously evenhanded in his depiction of the protagonist. Ryan may not crave an ongoing relationship with that one "special" individual, but he doesn't inflict his values on other people and doesn't expect everyone to agree with how he lives his life. For Ryan, living alone is simply a lifestyle choice that seems to be working for him. He isn't even particularly callous in the way he treats those he's in the process of lowering the employment-ending boom on. Ryan knows that someone has to do his job and it might as well be him. It certainly beats doing it in the new highly impersonal way Natalie has come up with. The cosmic question becomes is Ryan's eternal bachelor mindset truly endemic to his personality, or could he find true happiness with another person if he just gave it the old college try? Reitman's wryly humorous screenplay (co-authored with Sheldon Turner and based on the book by Walter Kim) explores Ryan's relationship - one platonic, the other not - with two women: the brash but actually quite naïve Natalie who, despite her seeming emotional detachment, believes in happily-ever-after storybook endings and long-term marital bliss, and the more seasoned Alex who has few illusions about what life has to offer in either of those two regards. The movie hears out all sides on the issue without casting judgment and without settling for easy answers. For that very reason, the movie also earns points for refusing to cater to the audience's expectations for a stereotypical, copout ending.
As Ryan, George Clooney really makes his rugged good looks and laid back charm work for him in this role, and Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga, as the two women in his life, match him every step of the way in their performances.
Given the hard economic times in which we live, "Up in the Air" could not be more topical in its treatment of unemployment and the devastating effect it has on the people who suffer the ravages of it. The movie may not blow you away as other social dramas do, but it will get you to thinking about your own life - and provide you with a few good laughs to lighten the load.