Up in the Air deals with a difficult and timely topic – people getting laid off and having their lives destroyed. At the same time it sort-of deals with another timely issue in society: the ridiculous (and pernicious) positive thinking and self-help crap these poor people are fed as their lives are being destroyed.  “This is the start of a new life …” is how it goes, talking to a 55 year old guy in bad health who knows nothing else besides this job he has done his entire life, and who has no way to feed, shelter or care for his family.

But herein lies the problem with the film. The film shows no balls when dealing with these issues. It never seriously objects to any of this, and never questions why these people are getting laid off (answer: to make obscenely rich stockholders even richer.) And it never dives into the issue of why these people are so completely and utterly destroyed when this happens to them (answer: the systematic dismantling of our social safety net, including health care of course, and at the same time the systematic discouragement of mutualism, cooperativism, human community, and anything that has the potential to bring people together and insulate them from being chewed up and spit out by corporations and the rich and pampered elite who run them.)

You see Clooney very charismatically firing people, handing them a packet that contains “their future,” and that’s that – you never find out how many of these poor slobs are able to gloriously reinvent themselves and earn anything close to their former salary. The film can admit this is “challenging” work, but can’t bring itself to admit it is obscene work. It never even tries to make the kind of broad, powerful statement this topic is crying out for.

Basically, these issues wind up being mere context, set dressing, for the personal plotline involving Clooney’s character, who is (as a side job) a ridiculous wannabe self-help guru telling people to jettison everything that “weighs them down,” including their family, friends, etc.. The filmmakers really capture the look and feel of these horrible seminars he holds in dreary hotel conference rooms (having been to a few myself.) He is helping to rot away our cooperative, communal tendencies with his stupid bullshit, but as his own family and a budding relationship with a bitchin’-cool woman he meets on the road start to collapse this absurd edifice he has constructed for himself (and sells to others) he softens and begins to grow. The movie captures this quite well and even somewhat movingly.

George Clooney really is the new Robert Redford – just put him on screen and you’re three-quarters of the way there! The man is just so warm, so electrifying, so winning! His acting is totally beside the point, although I should add that he does a really nice acting job in this film. His star power and charisma make the whole movie work. Plus, Clooney and Vera Farmiga have FABULOUS chemistry! They’re like a glamour couple out of a 1940’s movie. The actress playing the girl (Anna Kendrik) is solid, but far from electrifying.

In the end, I liked Clooney and Farmiga, and I enjoyed the personal story of Clooney and his relationships (I wasn’t blown away by the story, mind you, it was enjoyable.) But because there was such a strong and obvious emphasis placed on the issue of people getting laid off and destroyed – an incredible amount of on-screen time is spent on this, indeed it is literally a continuous theme throughout the movie – the movie’s refusal to make any kind of courageous or powerful (or even noticeable) statement about it all really left me cold and disappointed. In the hands of a better writer, this could have been one hell of a film – an opportunity was definitely lost. Just think what Victor Nunez in his prime could have done with a topic like this, for example.

I also found the ending a bit disappointing – sometimes I wish these filmmakers would just nut-up and take a chance, rather than playing everything all post-modern all the time.

Still, see it for Clooney, Farmiga, and a good (rather light) story about a charismatic man sort-of learning to let people into his life.