Thanks also for you comments and I tend to agree with you. As you say, there is much to like and admire about Up in the Air but I agree that the third act contains too many aspects that just don’t work as well as they could and you’ve nicely expressed why.

Cheers
Thomas

If you haven’t seen it I may venture close to SPOILER territory, so be wary….

I had a mixed reaction. I loved certain scenes and the milieu it presented – the down-sizing angle and the world of the professional traveller/status junkie made for a beguiling opening. And Natalie with all her high-achieving neurosis is just so perfectly written and realised.

But as the second act progressed, it felt like things turned messy….

While spouting his ‘non-attachment’ theory to his young charge, Ryan does the opposite. Which is fine, but we need to see the internal conflict that besets the character as he begins to question his own approach to life. We get none of that until much later. This indicates Ryan is too blind to realise he’s acting counter to his own beliefs so, for my money, he just ends up looking thick. Nothing else in the characterisation says this guy is a dummy or lives a life unexamined, so this huge blind-spot in his own behaviour struck a bum-note with me.

From a plotting point of view there’s really nothing wrong with this sequence of events, it’s just that we need to travel with the protagonist more and see his conflict as the universe conspires to tell him that his dearly held beliefs are flawed. We need that scene (far earlier than we get it) where Ryan is confused and vulnerable, but all we seem to get is George’s suave confidence.

I wonder if, in striving to avoid serving up a stock-standard redemption plot, the director got a little lost. All the genre conventions are all there – they just don’t come at the right time for it to make sense…

And the ‘big surpirse’ in the third act just felt like a cheat to me. It felt imposed; nothing in the performance of Alex indicated that reality. For big reveals like that to work, I need to have that, ‘oh, now I see it’ reaction – where you’re forced to re-interpret what you’ve seen up until then and for that new reality to make sense. Given what we see up to that point, IMO, it doesn’t work.

So – I’ve rambled, sorry, and I do stress that I really like elements of this film – Clooney’s a charisma machine and the sizzle between him and Farmiga is wonderful. But I think it’s drawing a long-bow to call this a well-made film – plot issues and some directorial choices undermine what could have been a much more powerful and involving story.

Just discovered the site and love it, btw!

Having seen it before all the marketing and media hype, I went in with no expectations other than to be entertained by George Clooney – And that he did, as always.

I know exactly what you are saying and I find it increasingly peculiar that more and more people are incapable of finding any middle ground when it comes to discussing films. No, Up in the Air is not an amazing film but it is a very good one and extremely competently made. Actually, I don’t mind so much if people do want to gush over it as good on them for discovering so much about it to like. But just because a film doesn’t live up to its unrealistic hype, it isn’t therefore a bad film.

Anyway, well said!
Thomas