Sum not as good as the whole of the parts

Rating: 6/10 (14 November 2010)

So Ivan Reitman is a very talented director. The film has a lot of good lines. If someone can make you empathize with someone whose job it is to fire people, you wouldn't be surprised that George Clooney was that person. Vera Farmiga as Alex Goran is exceptional and takes full advantage of the rare role for a woman over 35 who is not simply a bitter, lovelorn woman or simply a woman who is simply a woman married to her career. She has a fantastic, nuanced part and she takes full advantage of it. Anna Kendrick is excellent as bright, naive recent Ivy league grad Natalie Kenner. The supporting cast, including Melanie Lynnskey, Amy Morton, Jason Bateman, and Danny McBride are excellent. The subject material is topical. The soundtrack is great. There are some great one-liners.
And yet...and yet...in spite of these wonderful attributes, I found myself very disappointed in some aspects of this film. The use of the images of real people reacting to their termination seemed in some ways exploitative and even if this is only a minor critique, I don't know how this makes the film any more real. The film is not real. It's why we watch. Personally I was not comforted to see pictures of my fellow Americans showing how they felt at being fired (newsflash: it sucks!).
I found the didacticism of the conversations between Clooney's and Kendrick's characters cloying and naive. I found the notion that Clooney was so detached from his family, considering that he is the same character who counsels Kendrick that she shouldn't expect a lot of understanding from people who are being fired, a little difficult to take. Yes, Clooney's character is obviously a lone wolf to some degree, but he seems to have an exceptionally light touch with people and it seems hard to believe he is so remote from his family. If he enjoys the road, well, more power to him. Also if Reitman wishes to make the point that marriage is more desirable than the single life, he then undercuts his point when he counterposes Jack's living the footloose and fancy- free single life against that of his sister Kara (Amy Morton) who is in a trial separation from her husband. They are depicted in stark contrast initially, but ultimately, it would seem that her decision has not necessarily been for the best.
I found the tired preachiness of the counsel that Bingham should connect more with people simply a more polished version of more hackneyed counsel that one might see in less sophisticated, more mainstream fare. It might be more polished, but it's the same old preachiness simply wrapped up in a new package. In the same vein, the metaphor of the backpack which Bingham finally rejects (reminding me of the scene in "Traffic" when Michael Douglas as drug czar is unable to stomach delivering his own canned speech one more time, finding it doesn't mesh with the thorniness of real-world problems) seemed similarly preachy. Reitman has a wonderful ear for razor-sharp humor and dialogue, but his naivety (in "Juno" he seems not to understand the seriousness of a teen having a child) is on full display here in his hackneyed counsel about relationships. Ultimately I found this film disappointing because in spite of Reitman's obvious and prodigious gifts as a director, his naivety undoes him.