Wish that I'd walked out

Rating: 1/10 (31 January 2010)

This is one of the grimmer, unpleasant, and dehumanizing films I've seen in some time. Basically, its also an extended product-placement ad for American Airlines and Hilton Hotels, whose corporate logos are smacked in your face about every 10 minutes. Also its vaguely like the film "Koyaanisqatsi" but with actors and a story-line. I think that if the friends that I saw it with had put our heads together half-way through and done a whispered conference, we would have happily agreed to cut our losses and walk out. We wouldn't have missed much, including one of the more predictable plot "twists" in recent years.
I've been speculating on how on earth it could possibly win awards, let alone get much attention or praise. I'm guessing that - - Industry-insiders (and some reviewers) know Clooney personally and like him a lot (and they probably also know and like others involved in this production) - Like the main character, industry-insiders also spend a tremendous amount of their lives jetting around dealing with airports, accumulating air-miles which they have no time to use up, and staying in airport hotels. They probably closely identify with that part of his life.

Adults are so incredibly desperate for movies aimed at a mature adult audience that they're grabbing anything that comes along (for example "It's Complicated") and celebrating it just because it exists.

I'd say that the fact that this film was generating major Oscar-buzz is a telling indicator of just how twisted and desperate an age we're living in. Its like the world of "Idiocracy" keeps inching a few years closer...