Average story development on an Interesting Plot, processed with Rich Screenplay Components

Rating: 7/10 (26 February 2010)

Every year there are new film productions copying either independent, low-budget films or foreign language films. It's not always making copycats, but sometimes reflecting the same concept twice, as well. As the first thing to say, Up in the Air, doesn't reflect at all what the novel writer Walter Kirn tries to tell inside his story scoop. Besides, looking at this year's another production "The Messenger" , we see the same character models and same story development tools, there. Is it also a coincidence that both Ben Foster and Anna Kendrick are being hired for the same type of work only within a different industry? If it is, the coincidences will continue by having Woody Harrelson and George Clooney as the trainers of our young fellas, and still continue with both Ben Foster and Anna Kendrick throwing in the towel before working their way up in the job. I find it necessary to look for external resources before evaluating a film after my first view. Up in the Air is a bad adaptation, totally messing up with its story; making it look cheerful and smart to the viewer. What's cheerful is making the audience feel sad and curious about the actors, and what's smart is the screenplay just offering a wise motto of life.
The whole movie is actually the answer of one single question: "What's Randy Bingman's motto in life?"
George Clooney plays Randy the Mr.Backpack, who lives by means of his mouth. He makes a living with his mouth. From start to end, Randy just does 2 things: He talks and he travels.
Randy's words are like passengers of a plane. When they are unspoken, they are at the gates waiting for their flight arrival. While they are being spoken, they may turn to have multiple meanings. But after they were spoken his words are in our memory:
"I want you to pack your backpack with little stuff you own. Your laptop, your desk, your chair, and your bed, and your room, and your house. Now, I want you to leave everything behind of you. Now, do you feel a bit light?"
"Your relationships are the heaviest components of your life. It's hard to get rid of them"
Opening with a mocumentary style, George Clooney's confused character Randy introduces himself to us from the p.o.v of the people he sees and talks everyday. His job is his life and his personality. He is hired out to national companies of which managers prefer not to fire their own employees; instead Randy does this though job. He is a Human Resources professional. Awaring of his success, Randy's boss gives a trainee beside him. Thus Anna Kendrick's character -one of the best supporting actress nominees of the year in Academy- teams up with Randy. Clooney and Kendrick are coherent together, this gives us a chance to put ourselves in their shoes; even though their lives are boring and pockets are making huge amounts of paychecks with just talking and travelling.
As the story goes it mostly becomes more boring, longer dialogues, longer scenes, terribly bad editing; very rarely there are important thematic values that offers us lifelong wise advices. On the other hand, the ideological concept is so feminist. Vera Farmiga's character, Alex always finds the right way to do and her acts are always right and she never makes mistakes; just like a super-heroine. Randy falls in love with her, and from her p.o.v it's Randy's mistake to come to her house to explore that she's married. 'Cause being open-hearted is not a proper code of conduct. This concept rules that women have rights to betray their husbands with making cool guys fall in love with them, while men are faulty when they think that marriage is an important decision and it must not be given very quick.
Looking at the filming aspects, the first thing that comes to mind is there are so many directing and editing mistakes, mostly mistakes on the ongoing production phase: Deliberate errors by filmmakers... Crew and equipment visible when Natalie's being introduced due to the reflection in the glass window... Continuity mistakes expose that most of the scenes are reshot over and over again; and when the exterior scene backgrounds change, Jason Reitman's editors doesn't find it necessary to cut those scenes properly. When Ryan gets dropped off after leaving the school, you see him walking inside with the same car still in place, but in the next shot he's two steps behind of himself and the car is gone. During that party at Alex's place, she changes her sweater from satin blouse to black v-neck sweater and back again to her satin blouse in a very short period of time(less than a minute or two). Looking at all the picture compositions, all the qualities are just average; nothing more than that.
Consider the Academy nominations, of all the 6 major award nominations Up in the Air got, it only deserves to win the Best Screenplay award. Myself as an amateur screenplay writer, even though I don't generally like adaptation scripts, Up in the Air is my favourite screenplay of this year. Sadly, the film altogether was nothing more than average. It should have nominated for Best Original Song as well for the song Up in the Air by Rolfe Kent.