Up in the Air

Flying high, city to city, your life in a suitcase, firing people for a living, aware of every hotel/car rental/flight deal in the USA, trying to save up 10 million air miles, lovin' it. That just about sums up Ryan Bingham's (George Clooney) life in Jason Reitman's new film Up in the Air, a romantic comedy that probes the depths of the resolute "can't be tied down" bachelor. Bingham works for a company that flies its workhorses around the country 24/7 firing people for firms who don't have the gusto to do it themselves. But technological complications arise in the form of a lively young graduate (Anna Kendrick as Natalie Keener) whose videoconferencing ambitions threaten Bingham's comfortable lifestyle. But before taking her revolutionary ideas to heart, manager Craig Gregory (Jason Bateman) decides she needs to learn the ropes herself and sends her "on the road" with the veteran Bingham. During their trip, experience meets education in an age-old rivalry designed to test the limits of both their idealistic life plans. Throw Bingham's love interest Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga) into the mix, along with a troublesome wedding, and you have a multi-layered quizzical examination of the platonic nature of values, thoroughly saturated with longstanding larks.

A thoughtful, entertaining, somewhat unpredictable story, Up in the Air demonstrates how things work out when they don't work out while deconstructing the concept of love. Whether or not it considers the subjective life to be ideal is up for debate insofar as its heartbroken protagonist sustains his uncommitted lifestyle by suavely spreading misery as the crow flies.