Up in the errrrrrr

Up in the Air is a bad movie on a few basic levels. The first is Jason Reitman's insistence on "meaningful" montages set to weepy indie and folk-rock. They seem to pile up faster and faster as the movie goes on and they don't get any more actually meaningful.

The bigger problem with Up in the Air lies, for me, in the grossness of the topicality of the whole thing. Where it gets kind of gross is the use of the recession (including of course Real Fired People) to lend gravitas to another movie about an aging loner who realizes that (despite the fact that it's been working out pretty well for him so far) being alone is not the way to spend his life (this general idea is executed much better and with less seriousness in Grosse Pointe Blank). Reitman doesn't really have anything to say about the recession (losing your job sucks) and he doesn't actually have anything to say about isolation in the 21st century or isolation or loneliness in general.

And that's fine, you know, I don't walk into a movie theater needing to be told something completely new about life, I just don't think asking me to feel bad for a George Clooney character because Real People are telling me they got fired is particularly reasonable either.