Up in the Air (2009)
Average Rating: 8.1/10
Reviews Counted: 260
Fresh: 236 | Rotten: 24
Led by charismatic performances by its three leads, director Jason Reitman delivers a smart blend of humor and emotion with just enough edge for mainstream audiences.
Average Rating: 7.9/10
Critic Reviews: 46
Fresh: 41 | Rotten: 5
Led by charismatic performances by its three leads, director Jason Reitman delivers a smart blend of humor and emotion with just enough edge for mainstream audiences.
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Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 200,715
My Rating
Movie Info
Jason Reitman's adaptation of the novel Up in the Air tells the story of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), who makes his living personally handing out pink slips -- he's the top hatchet man at a company that other companies hire when they are downsizing. And since business is booming, his job keeps him on the go constantly. He flies all across the country, staying in a series of nice hotels. And although this itinerant lifestyle prevents him from having any kind of stable, regular life, this
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Cast
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George Clooney
Ryan Bingham -
Vera Farmiga
Alex Goran -
Jason Bateman
Craig Gregory -
Danny McBride
Jim Miller -
Melanie Lynskey
Julie Bingham -
Amy Morton
Kara Bingham -
Sam Elliott
Maynard Finch -
J.K. Simmons
Bob -
Zach Galifianakis
Steve -
Chris Lowell
Kevin -
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Up in the Air Trailer & Photos
All Critics (260) | Top Critics (46) | Fresh (239) | Rotten (24) | DVD (10)
It's a pleasure to watch an adult American comedy that tries to deal with the real world, however much of a fantasy it carves from it.
Top CriticThe pitch-perfect direction by Jason Reitman perfectly balances comedy and drama.
Director Jason Reitman brings such splendid balance and nuance to Bingham's story that you can't hate the man; indeed you end up pitying him.
From taxi to touchdown, Reitman knows how to get us to the next destination.
Jason Reitman's dry, moving "comedy," based on the Walter Kirn novel, is a sly indictment of Corporate America, Marketing America and Frequent Flying America.
I think that this is a classic in the making.
There is perhaps no film that represents the present better ...
Sometimes, it suggests, you can fly 10 million miles but never really go anywhere at all.
Up in the Air succeeds because it doesn't take itself that seriously and it's not interested in trying to explain obvious truths to the rest of us plebeians. It just wants to show a moment of fundamental change in a man's life.
Just when you start to wonder where the surprise twists will happen, Reitman defies conventional storytelling.
Incisive and occasionally sad, this captured the zeitgeist of the late-Zeroes' tectonically shifting economics. But Jason Reitman's generous, rich, rewarding tragicomedy of occupational dissatisfaction will still wow viewers even after (hopeful) recovery.
Up in the Air is so funny, so consistently surprising and so emotionally in-touch that it could have only been crafted by one of the most soulful directors working today.
Reitman proves with Up in the Air that the sky's the limit for his career - he has proven with his three films to be one of the premiere directors of his generation.
Companionship. Independence. Loyalty. Flyer miles. All are a part of the life of George Clooney's corporate downsizer in the timely, and timeless, Up in the Air.
One of the pleasures of the film is watching Jason Reitman blossom into a filmmaker light years ahead of the one who made the underwhelming Thank You For Smoking and the overly self-conscious Juno.
George Clooney is thoroughly likeable as the amusingly callous Ray - even watching him at the heart-breaking job of terminating folk en-masse is fun, but it is the women that give the film its heart.
Reitman further perfects his sharp, funny, and affecting seriocomic style in crafting films that wildly entertain in the moment and then linger long in the mind and heart.
Life happens... live it one day at a time and connect to whomever you can, even if it's the person losing their job sitting right across from you.
One of the things that makes George Clooney a great movie star is that he's always letting us know just how much fun he's having being George Clooney.
While it is a good film, a worthy film, a thoughtful film, I'm not sure it is really an Oscar-calibre film. (Blu-ray Edition)
As much as it is a comedy in the classic Tracy/Hepburn mold, "Up in the Air" is very much a drama of the moment.
Hay tantos ángulos desde donde se puede hablar de esta cinta -responsabilidad social, management, internet, matrimonio, soledad%u2026- que está desde ya, destinada a convertirse en un clásico.
A 21st Century take on downsizing and dating in this no-strings attached age of outsourcing and friends with benefits.
Audience Reviews for Up in the Air
Super Reviewer
Up in the Air is not an earth shattering drama we have not seen done before. George Clooney is great in his role as a heartless individual who eventually turns a new leaf to be a good man but we've seen him play this role dozens of times. He's an actor with one face and this is him doing the Oceans Eleven and The Men Who Stare At Goats guy yet again. I liked the first half because it was briliant black comedy with Clooney doing something new. Up in the Air is actually an annoyingly snooty and schmultsy film that loses it's heartless tone of humour in the latter half because of it's need as a mainstream film to have a cheesy morality appeal and a eye rolling sobby romance substory. Director Jason Reitman made a similar mistake with Thankyou for Smoking but Thankyou For Smoking had a more likable Aaron Eckhart as a horrible businessman and in contrast, Clooney's horrible character; Ryan Bingham, is never likable as Clooney playing the role. It also managed to keep some of it's edge but Up in the Air lost it entirely to please a mainstream audience which is unlike director Jason Reitman who directed Juno. Sky Movies called this a "first class comedy". It honestly is in the wrong sense, a sophisticated, posh film that I knew would become Oscar bait. And quite often it's a very dislikable, depressing film.
Super Reviewer
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- Ryan Bingham: You know that moment when you look into somebody's eyes and you can feel them staring into your soul and the whole world goes quiet just for a second?
- Natalie Keener: Yes!
- Ryan Bingham: Right. Well, I don't.
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- Natalie Keener: Hungry much?
- Ryan Bingham: Our business expense allots forty dollars each for dinner. I plan on grabbing as many miles as I can.
- Natalie Keener: Okay, you got to fill me in on the miles thing. What is that about? You're talking about, like, frequent flyer miles?
- Ryan Bingham: You really want to know?
- Natalie Keener: I'm dying to know.
- Ryan Bingham: I don't spend a nickel, if I can help it, unless it somehow profits my mileage account.
- Natalie Keener: So, what are you saving up for? Hawaii? South of France?
- Ryan Bingham: It's not like that. The miles are the goal Let's just say that I have a number in mind and I haven't hit it yet.
- Natalie Keener: That's it? You're saving just to save? That's a little abstract. What's the target?
- Ryan Bingham: I'd rather not...
- Natalie Keener: Is it a secret target?
- Ryan Bingham: It's ten million miles.
- Natalie Keener: Okay. Isn't ten million just a number?
- Ryan Bingham: Pi's just a number.
- Natalie Keener: Well, we all need a hobby. No, I- I- I don't mean to belittle your collection. I get it. It sounds cool.
- Ryan Bingham: I'd be the seventh person to do it. More people have walked on the moon.
- Natalie Keener: Do they throw you a parade?
- Ryan Bingham: You get lifetime executive status. You get to meet the chief pilot, Maynard Finch.
- Natalie Keener: Wow.
- Ryan Bingham: And they put your name on the side of a plane.
- Natalie Keener: Men get such hardons from putting their names on things. You guys don't grow up. It's like you need to pee on everything.
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- Natalie Keener: Please, for the love of God, can I fire the next one.
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- Ryan Bingham: I thought I was a part of your life.
- Alex Goran: I thought we signed up for the same thing.
- Ryan Bingham: Try and help me understand exactly what it is that you signed up for.
- Alex Goran: I thought our relationship was perfectly clear. I mean, you're an escape. You're a break from our normal lives. You're a...a parenthesis.
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- Ryan Bingham: I'm like my mother, I stereotype. It's faster.
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- Ryan Bingham: I'm like my mother, I stereotype. It's faster.
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| Why isn't Anna Kendrick listed? | 28 days ago | 0 |
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Foreign Titles
- In the Air (FR)
