Up In the Air sees Juno director Jason Reitman catering to the grown-ups, a film that could only have been made in a climate of financial disillusionment, of lay-offs and corporate despair. George Clooney is adeptly cast as ‘Job Transition Counsellor’ Ryan Bingham, a Jet Set nomad whose job it is to fire people their companies are too cowardly to confront. Unchallenged in air miles and a native speaker of corporate babble, Bingham’s career leaves him disconnected, a ‘parenthesis’ in the lives of family and friends, and he decides to reconnect with the life that is passing him by outside the Departures Lounge. Clooney wisely knows when to play it thoughtful and when to send up his own slick cappuccino-sipping image. Reitman gives us a view of an America stunted by unemployment. The fly-on-the-wall camerawork and inclusion of interviews with the real life unemployed are a thoughtful touch, and the plot is leisurely paced and gently amusing. But Reitman’s film barely strays beyond reassuring familiarity, falling back on scenes like the airport rush or the awkward family wedding, conventions as unambitious and overused as its twee folk soundtrack.
