‘Up in the Air’ is pretty darn good

There seems to be all this Academy Award hoopla surrounding Up in the Air. It’s been said that it’s the best movie of the year (mainly by the National Board of Review) and that it’s brilliant, fantastic, enjoyable and all those other buzzwords you see floating in quotation marks in movie trailers.

Well, it’s safe to say that you can believe the hype.

Directed and co-written by Jason Reitman and based on the novel by Walter Kirn, Up in the Air is, in essence, a story about Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a man who is going through somewhat of a mid-life crisis. He works for a company that sends him all over the country to fire people. He racks up frequent flyer miles and wants to reach legendary status by getting an induction to some club that confirms that he flew over gazillion miles.

A wrench is thrown into his master plan when the ambitious, go-getter, borderline annoying Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) presents the company with a way to fire people via webcam. To prevent damage control and to preserve his elite status with numerous hotels and airlines, Ryan shows Natalie the benefit of firing people in person.

In a series of events, things start to pile up for Ryan. Considering he is traveling 322 days of the year, he never sees his family and besides his occasional rendezvous with his love interest Alex (Vera Farmiga), he is alone and isolated from the rest of the world. To top things off, the biggest goal in his life is to rack up frequent flyer miles and become a star member at as many rental car places as possible.

Put that all into perspective and it is kind of depressing.

I’ll spare you the movie’s blatant portrayal of our “tough economic times.” That is nearly a backdrop to the movie’s quirky tone that only Reitman (and co-writer Sheldon Turner) can accomplish. The film has the tendency to steer you in the direction of Depression-ville, but there is a glimmer of hope that matches the sparkle in Clooney’s eye. It’s a piece of life affirming fruit that wasn’t picked from Tony Robbins’s over-ripened motivational garden. It’s cooler. It’s clever. Most of all, it doesn’t talk down to you. Instead, it gives you self-reflection and re-evaluation with a bag of airline peanuts and a miniature bottle of vodka.

Clooney’s magnetic charisma and swoon-worthy voice is always a sell in movie. For a while, he made me even think that I liked Men Who Stare At Goats. He does a stellar job navigating this movie and Farmiga gives off a naughty, yet tasteful performance of his love interest, Alex (who is basically Ryan’s female equivalent). But it is definitely Anna Kendrick (of Twilight fame) who adds the third dimension to the lead cast. Her character’s type A personality injects a freshness that keeps up with the charming beast that is Mr. Clooney.

The movie articulates itself in a way that connects with the audience, yet it is still contemporary and has a healthy dose of feistiness. There’s an emotional weight to the movie that is tolerable and a bittersweet flavor that goes down with ease.

Up in the Air is all the things a movie should be: funny, thoughtful, witty and has a bit of romance. Most of all, it’s first-class (pun intended). Grade: A-