Up in the Air

Ryan Bingham loves his job. He loves the freedom, loves the travel and loves the opportunity to discuss his worldview with the people he meets. His line of work takes him around the country, stopping in major cities to conduct employee layoffs on behalf of bosses too cowardly to do the job themselves; in each scenario, Ryan soothes the terminated employee with warm but blatantly rehearsed speeches about unfulfilled potential and the newly created opportunity to chase one's dreams. He's a perverse motivational speaker and professional end-of-life care rolled into one, a priest who gives the last rites and gently assures the dying that there is indeed a heaven. Played by George Clooney, Ryan can't help but ooze disarming charisma, and Up in the Air suggests that some of Clooney's slick screen presence might be snake oil.

Spending all of his time in airports, hotels and offices has taken a psychic toll on Ryan: he enjoys living life out of a carry-on bag (checked luggage requires you to be at the airport 35 minutes earlier, costing him a week of his life for every year on the job) and even gives motivational speeches on the virtues of freeing oneself from the burdens of possessions and relationships. Underneath his warm rapport with the people he fires is the coldness with which he deliberately isolates himself from the world.

Up in the Air, the third feature by Jason Reitman, is primarily about the challenge to Ryan's ascetic philosophy, presented in the form of two relationships, one he casually courts and the other forced upon him by his occupation. He meets Alex (Vera Farmiga), another frequent flyer who lives by a similar code of conduct as Ryan, and they engage in casual sex when they happen to cross paths during their constant shuffle across these great United States. They compare notes on the best places to grab a quick bite and the membership cards that offer the best rewards. Their attraction is immediate, but both agree not to take it further than a casual level.

The second person who suddenly enters Ryan's life is Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick, one of the few bright spots in the Twilight films); fresh out of college, Natalie proposes massive shifts in Ryan's company that would stop sending people like Ryan to businesses and instead conduct layoffs via Web chats, thus cutting out nearly all of Career Transition Counseling's travel budget and streamlining the corporation. Reitman's decision to set a film about the current job situation in the point-of-view of those doing the firing is bold enough, and Natalie's technological, hyper-efficient overhaul of CTC reveals that even those who fire the stragglers of the world's increasing automation are themselves becoming obsolete. Ryan attacks this plan and tells Natalie that she doesn't know a thing about firing people, so their boss (Jason Bateman, channeling just a bit of the jerk he played in Juno) has Natalie travel with Ryan for a while to give her some experience.

Kendrick's plucked eyebrows and icy stare provide a sharp, often humorous, contrast for Clooney's lopsided grin and his expressive eyes (seriously, forget the smile; the man's got the best eyes in the biz). Natalie makes a fool of herself in her first round of termination sessions, her rigidly formulated plan for firing people disintegrated when faced with an actual human response; is, though, Ryan's warm and consoling tone that much different? His lines are just as rehearsed as hers, but he delivers them more naturally, and his own lines are the result of years of practice with people, so what is unpredictable and terrifying for Natalie is but one of several general types of responses Ryan hears every day. In one of the funnier segments, he teaches Natalie about the benefits of carry-on bags over luggage and discards items in her suitcase that won't fit in the smaller bag and simply take up room, reminiscent of an Army pro removing unnecessary items from a rookie's gear. He derides Natalie's heartless business model, but she rightly points out that his philosophy is openly hostile to human connections, for building "a cocoon of self-banishment" around himself.

In only a short time, Reitman lets us get to know these characters: Ryan tells Natalie about his one goal in life -- collecting frequent flyer miles -- and she sits, abashed, as he explains that he could get his name put on a plane if he collects 10 million. "You guys don't grow up" she rants; "It's like you need to pee on everything." Natalie's cold, theoretical professionalism belies a barely contained emotionality; when her boyfriend dumps her via text message (ironic considering her proposal for electronic termination), she confesses to Ryan and Alex that she only moved to Omaha and got a job at CTC to be with him and that, for all her business-oriented plans, she most wants a family. Ryan, on the other hand, is instantly likeable and treats everyone like a buddy, but his private life is solipsistic and vacant. Naturally, the two become counterpoints for each other, the older professional teaching the inexperienced rookie the full impact of her job while Natalie attempts to parlay Ryan's gift in the meeting room -- such as assuaging a late-middle-age pink slip recipient (J.K. Simmons) by reminding him that he minored in French cuisine and is the sort of person who'd become trapped in desk work years ago and now had the chance to follow his dream -- into actual humanity.

Exploring the area between them is Alex. Farmiga gained exposure through The Departed, albeit in a role that offered nothing for her or any other actresses despite playing a part that condensed two roles from the Hong Kong films that inspired Scorsese's flick. Funnily enough, she essentially plays two roles here, a humanistic soul who tempts Ryan with his first serious thoughts of love and the horrific embodiment of his anti-romantic philosophy. She acts as the link between Natalie and Ryan, and it's darkly amusing to see Ryan's horror when confronted with either aspect of her character even as he falls for her. For Natalie, Alex offers a sobering portrait of what could happen if she continues to sacrifice her dreams. It's a delicate part, and Farmiga's ability to keep her character's true self ambiguous until the end places her near or at the front of the pack for this year's Best Actress race.

I managed to avoid reading a single review for Up in the Air and avoiding all the hype it was possible to ignore, a feat, given the circumstances, almost as impressive as Ryan's goal of reaching 10 million frequent flyer miles. Of course, one can't help but catch shards of opinions, and the general consensus seems to think that Reitman taps into the zeitgeist of the current economic fallout. I remain unconvinced; Reitman has been working on an adaptation of Walter Kirn's 2001 novel almost as long as its been on the shelves, and the references to the recent collapse occasionally stick out like sore thumbs. After spending most of the film explicitly mentioning the difficulty of job hunting in the current climate, one character receives a job on the basis of a letter of recommendation that is short, vague and wouldn't be accepted by a high school career adviser on behalf of a student, much less a major company looking for an executive.

Far more interesting are the lives of the three main characters, relevant to contemporary issues facing society but not defined by them. If Reitman does not convincingly parlay the interesting perspective on the financial crisis into a weighty commentary on it, he at least crafts an interesting and layered multi-character study, featuring three of the best performances of the year. Reitman succeeds best at examining the mindset of these characters and the haunting tragedy of these financial times through his direction, much improved over his somewhat lackadaisical take on Cody's script for Juno: Up in the Air moves through an isolated world, defined by dimly lit, sparsely occupied hotel lobbies, electronic ticketing booths and empty office workrooms where Ryan and Natalie sit deflated among scattered, empty chairs that likely lost their masters that day; one shot, of Ryan through his hotel room, looks as if it came right out of Let the Right One In, a film that perfectly captured feelings of loneliness and isolation. The penultimate scene, a brief montage of the fired employees -- actual non-actors who'd been recently laid-off that Reitman cast in the film -- who disprove Ryan's erstwhile outlook on life by telling the camera how the love of friends and family saw them through the stress and uncertainty of unemployment; it's a moment that recalls less the headlines making the news than the final shot of Schindler's List, where Spielberg showed us those who survived a horrible ordeal. That moment is worth more than Reitman's nearly on-the-nose dialogue about the economy combined.

Eastbound & Down — Season 1

I've been watching Jody Hill's career with great interest ever since I caught his funny but uneven low-budget debut The Foot Fist Way. That film, as well as his follow-up, the ambitious but occasionally reprehensible Observe and Report, showed a demented talent who filtered the "Judd Apatow formula" -- honestly, Kevin Smith was doing it a decade earlier, and better -- through a lens of poor Appalachian bitterness and cynicism. His view of the feral madness bubbling beneath unassuming suburban schlubs plays like a white trash David Lynch. He took the darkness of Punch-Drunk Love and tried to force it back into Adam Sandler's normal comic persona, and that's why his streak of noble failures are so frustrating. He's got a hell of a goal, but he hasn't quite found the means to pull it off. Until now.


Eastbound & Down, a collaboration between Hill, his writing partner Ben Best and his favorite player, Danny McBride, gives the twisted trio the time they need to flesh out their warped yet strangely plausible microcosm and the even weirder characters who inhabit it. McBride has always played a redneck variant of the Will Ferrell persona, that of the incompetent athlete or craftsman who believes himself to be the best in his field no matter how many times he fails to do anything right, and Ferrell himself even guest stars in two of the episodes. But his Kenny Powers is something more, a devastatingly funny combination of Ferrell's "mediocre American man" and Ricky Gervais' David Brent.

Powers was once a professional baseball player. Starting with the Atlanta Braves, he made a name for himself in his rookie year with his cannon of an arm and, later, his unfiltered mouth. With his trademark catchphrase "You're fucking out!" and his appalling statements concerning women, homosexuals and minorities, he became the Bad Boy of Baseball, as renowned for his unbelievable ego as his 101 mph pitch. I would say that the fame went to his head, but you get the idea that fame went to his head before anyone had even heard of him. He bounces from team to team, and the hard living takes its toll on his talents, until at last his slowed pitch and a steroids scandal force him out of the majors.

Down but not -- in his addled mind -- out, Powers returns to his hometown in what he believes will be a triumphant return that will fuel his comeback. Indeed, a few townsfolk are overjoyed to see him, but Kenny is so blinded by ego that he's as likely to punch them in the face as sign an autograph. The rest of the town, however, is indifferent to their fallen idol. Kenny moves in with his brother Dustin (John Hawkes) and his wife Cassie (Jennifer Irwin), who urge him to get a job as they know the glory days are behind him.

Kenny eventually relents and heads to the local high school, where he starts as a substitute gym teacher and fills in full-time when the old teacher dies. He sees it as a chance to impress the town's youth and a way to provide a steady income until the big leagues come calling back, and soon he's the most inappropriate teacher who ever dared to stand in front of a class and lecture. The only way he could be any worse a teacher is if he had a relationship with a student, but he does just fine being a monster without crossing that hurdle (and thank God Hill never takes it that far, unlike the disturbing rape sequence in Observe and Report).

Kenny brings that same blind, unwarranted optimism and energy to his coaching -- even though he never seems to teach the kids anything beyond what a legend he is -- and soon his mania has won over the oddball band teacher Stevie Janowski (Steve Little) -- who may or may not be mentally challenged -- and milquetoast principal Terrence Cutler (Andrew Daly). He also attempts to rekindle a relationship with old flame April (Katy Mixon), now engaged to Terrence. April is the second most engaging character after Kenny, as she has clearly moved on in life, but she has a darker side that comes to the fore as Kenny relentlessly tries to woo her. Mixon handles both sides perfectly, and you can buy why such a person might fall for Kenny beyond mere plot contrivances.


Hill, Best and McBride wrote all six of the season's episodes, which they justly dub "chapters." Eastbound & Down certainly plays like a novel, directly continuing where the last episode left off. That planning allows the cast of improv heavies to do their thing without letting the show spin out of orbit, and the situations Kenny finds himself in do not seem simply like setups. His excursion to the local BMW dealer (run by Will Ferrell in his best role in some years) initially seems little more than an excuse to put their star executive producer in the show, but Ashley Schaffer is such a brilliantly loony character in his own right that he makes the episode stand out. We return to the dealership a few episodes later, where Kenny must face off with his old, also-shamed baseball rival, played by Craig Robinson, and the results are magnificent. The entire show is based on the perversion of the small town hero story, and the face off between the two manages to skewer epic sports showdowns with their laughable display.

Naturally, Kenny has a handful of highs to accompany his many, terrible lows, as watching someone being kicked in the gutter constantly loses its appeal; having him slip and fall back in the gutter as he finally tries to get out, however, is gold. The final episode ends with a minor cliffhanger as Kenny is called back to the majors, jeopardizing his budding reconnections with the people around him. Then there's a final twist that makes you wonder if Kenny will repeat the cycle all over again in the next season.


It's hard to fault this excellent first season for anything other than its brevity. Not only are the characters hilarious and their interactions the most cringe-worthily funny outside of a Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant collaboration, the show looks great as well. Three of the six episodes are directed by indie darling-cum-budding comedy giant David Gordon Green, who also made Pineapple Express a damn pretty piece of escapism. Obviously, they aren't pulling out their hair over the rule of thirds here, but some establishing shots look downright superb.

My only qualm with this season is that it rushes itself near the end to get to a definite conclusion. Kenny decides to put his former life behind him after a particularly embarrassing night, but the shift is too sudden and the reason not quite valid enough to suggest such a 180. Also, it's episodic nature might turn off viewers looking to return to their favorite moments, as the show needs its whole season to fully work. Nevertheless, this is incredibly daring television, all the more rewarding for how damn funny it is. The idea that they got away with this, even on HBO, is astounding. I look forward to Jody Hill honing his craft in films, as well as seeing Danny McBride get more work, but right now, I can think of nothing I'd rather see them do more than this superb series.

Pineapple Express

This year has already given us one great Apatow Production in Forgetting Sarah Marshall (still the funniest film of the year so far), but the second Seth Rogen-Evan Goldberg written film, Pineapple Express, gives it a decent run for its money. It’s not as well crafted as FSM, but, like that film, doesn’t go more than a few minutes without raising a laugh.

The story follows Dale Denton, a processing server who loves weed, and his amiable drug dealer Saul, who flee a drug supplier (Ted Jones, played by Gary Cole), his hitmen, and corrupt cops after Dale witnesses Ted murdering a member of a rival drug supplier. What follows is a hilarious if slightly uneven mash of action and comedy, and it’s sure to entertain.


Seth isn’t really exploring new ground here. All his characters are slight tweaks on a core model: in 40 Year Old Virgin, he was a gruff but lovable schlub whose was eloquent enough to get laid. In Superbad he was a simple cop who used his position to try to look cool. In Knocked Up, he was just a schlub full stop, initially a prick but eventually lovable. Here, he’s a pathetic schlub thrust into an impossible scenario. Seth’s kind of a chubby Tom Hanks playing Tom Hanks. He’s just different enough in each role to not make me worry for his acting future the way I do for Michael Cera, but he’s still getting a little too one-note for comfort.

James Franco, however, puts in the performance of his career. In the Spider-Man films, I found him great as the pained kid who just wanted his father’s love, but I found him insufferable, whiny, and completely un-intimidating when he became the New Goblin. Here, he positively inhabits the role of Saul, capturing all the blankness of a habitual pot smoker without going out of his way to highlight his short term memory loss or his empty-headedness as well as making him lovable. It’s a strange year when, in the first 7 months, the two finest acting performances are a clown villain in a comic book film and a stoner in an action-comedy.

After Dale witnesses the murder (and they don’t mess around, you only have to wait about 8-10 minutes before the plot gets underway), the two ineptly dodge Ted’s vengeance: they run to the woods but forget that Ted’s bought cops can track their cell phones. Even when it dawns upon Saul, they don’t take proper steps. They go see Red, Saul’s middleman supplier who buys from Ted and sells to Saul, even though common sense would dictate that Red would be the first person Ted went to. From there it spirals into an explosive, if predictable action-comedy that errs on the side of action.

The focus of the jokes isn’t so much one-liners (though there are plenty of those), but in capturing the absurdity of Dale and Saul’s situation. Conversations are jumbled; everyone frantically talks over one another, making lines hard to filter out. I, however, like this method, because too many comedies let people in an argument speak one at a time so jokes can be heard. Here, it feels like you’re really watching two paranoid stoners who (quite rightly) think they are going to die at any second. The comedy only gets better when Red is introduced. He is at first an asshole and seemingly an antagonist, but, in the film’s third act, manages to steal the show even from James Franco. He’s crazy, simple, and screamingly funny. By the end of the film, he is somehow alive and somehow the best part of the film.

The action scenes are too jump-cutty, but they are where the film stands out. There is a massive fistfight, car chase, and a massive ending gunfight to keep you entertained. The scenes convey a great deal of the film’s humor, yet they are fairly decent action scenes in their own right. It’s not nearly as good a blend of humor and action as Hot Fuzz, but it’s a damn sight funnier than just about anything else out this year.

It’s not all great, though. Seth’s girlfriend serves no purpose other than to make him look pathetic, and her story ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly. My biggest complaint is actually Gary Cole. I love Gary, but he’s at best mediocre as a crazed drug supplier and, at worst, awful. His right hand man is a corrupt cop, played by Rosie Perez, who one can actually understand these days. Both mistake Dale and Saul for professionals sent by their rivals The Asians. Mistaking idiots for pros is uncomfortable familiar to Dumb & Dumber and a host of other films, and this doesn’t really feel unique enough to forgive that. Also, there is a predictable romance between Cole and Perez that is forced and doesn’t even manage to be funny in a “hey look how forced this is” way.


Anyone who goes into this film hoping for a great pot comedy will be crushingly disappointed; pot is merely the MacGuffin here. However, I was relieved; there are few things less funny than pot humor, and I was afraid the film would be a misfire. In fact, not only is the film not pot humor, it shows the flaws of stoners. Don’t get me wrong, the film is purely pro-pot, but Rogen and Goldberg write two stoners who are lovable but pathetic. Dale is in a job that requires little effort just so he can smoke all the time, and he is dating a high school girl. She keeps begging him to meet her parents, but he is scared, which is probably smart since she borders on jailbait. Saul is even sadder: he sits in his apartment watching old 227 reruns surrounded by electronic gadgets so he never has to leave. Pot comedies beat you over the head with how guys who are normally losers are thrust into a magical world of adventure and hot chicks when they smoke pot. Pineapple Express shows two guys who could possibly survive their ordeal if they’d just stop smoking for 2 hours.

As I said, there’s too much action and not enough comedy, but James Franco and Danny McBride make this movie and keep me rolling for the entire film. Gary Cole was weak, but I think the writing has as much to do with that as his portrayal. It’s not the best film I’ve seen, but I must say I laughed more than I do with all but the best of comedies.