Jason Reitman, handsome, clever, and rich, with a dad who made GhostBusters and an Oscar nomination to his own name for his second film, seems to unite some of the best blessings of existence, and has now released three films to resoundingly positive reviews containing very little to distress or vex him. Up In The Air in all likelihood represents another flush of awards success, following determinedly on the heels of 2007‘s Juno.
Up In The Air‘s apparent focus on the process of redundancy and this man, Ryan Bingham, hired to fire employees whose bosses can‘t face doing so themselves, should make for a topical, zeitgeist comedy in the same vein as Reitman‘s spin-dissecting debut, Thank You For Smoking. Actually, Up In The Air is more interested in its smooth lead character and his insistence on living a life involving no baggage greater than what fits easily in his overnight bag. He‘s a version of Hugh Grant in a About A Boy, with his riposte to John Donne‘s "no man is an island" sermon: "I am an island. I‘m bloody Ibiza!" Bingham is a little more upmarket: Mauritius maybe, or St. Kitts.
If you‘re one of many people "let go" in the late Noughties recession, chances are you might not be as keen on Reitman‘s pseudo-documentary footage of the recently redundant reacting to the bad news as he is. These 30 second clips of the newly unemployed are presented as something to find alternately touching and comic, but it‘s done in a decidedly glib fashion.
The film is on less phony ground when it sticks to its main man. Some A-list stars are A-list stars because they disappear into a role with alarming invisiblity - Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow is virtually unrecognisable as the same man in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, or in Edward Scissorhands, and so on. Others are compelling precisely because they entirely suffuse any role with their own flavour. It is into this category that George Clooney falls - he is hired for that essential Clooney-ness which shines out even from parts as different as a dumb convict in O Brother, Where Art Thou? or a CIA operative in Syriana.
