I'm Like My Mother. I Stereotype. It's Faster.

Ah, finally we're getting closer to today.


Up In The Air was the only major contender from last year's Oscar race the I didn't see (well, major in a sense. I have no desire to watch The Blind Side, for example. Besides, Up In The Air was nominated for a hell of a lot more Oscars than the Bullock helmer.) I spotted it a couple of weeks back and thought, what the hell. It looked like a nice easy-watching film to ease myself back into things post parental departure. So I grabbed it, and I was right.

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney - no relation to the Oscar winning composer behind The Weary Kind - funny they both turned up at the same Oscars ceremony, hey?) is employed by a company that contracts out its services to companies too afraid or kind hearted or whatever to fire their own employees. Basically, Ryan flies around the United States firing people for a living. He sits across the table from them, tells them that they're fired, and then doesn't take any of their anguish home with him because he doesn't know them - their pain doesn't affect him on an emotional level because he has no connection with them outside of that office. Thinking about it, it actually starts to make sense in a twisted way. I don't want to be told that I have lost my job by anyone, but it doesn't really make a difference if that initial news comes from my actual employer or someone they have contracted in. The initial shock and upset is the same, so one may as well spare the employer from having to deal with it. I can always question my boss later and find out why, once the shock and anger has calmed a little, and it becomes true curiosity driving my questioning, rather than a quest to prove my boss wrong.


But I digress. Ryan. Fires people for a living. He is constantly in the air, has no close family, no friends. He has so many frequent flier miles it hurts. On one of these trips he meets Alex (Vera Farmiga), someone in the same position as him - always on the road (or, ba-doom, up in the air), and the two begin a complex, schedule-defying affair. Just sex, right? Around the same time, Ryan's boss (Jason Bateman) takes on a new employee, Natalie (Anna Kendrick), who proposes to revolutionise the company by keeping the employees grounded - they can fire people using telephone and video hookups - wham. The boss tasks Ryan with showing Natalie the ropes on the road while they set up the new system, against Ryan's very strong wishes. He is happy on his own, with his solitary time in airport lounges and in hotel rooms. He mentions that he is in the air, what was it, 320+ nights a year, which means he has to spend a lousy and miserable 40-odd nights a year in his apartment. He gives lectures on how to construct your life so that it will quite literally fit in a suitcase, so you could life it on your back - get rid of those loved ones! Who needs possessions?


While on the road Natalie is dumped by text message by her long-term boyfriend, whom she had uprooted her life and moved to Nebraska for, passing up numerous great job offers. She is devastated, but shortly Ryan and Natalie are called back to the office as the remote firing system is about to be put into effect. Ryan doesn't go straight back, instead heading to Wisconsin to go to his sister's wedding (played by Melanie Lynskey - Melanie Lynskey fest!) where he begins to realise that his life isn't all it's cracked up to be - his family is happy to see him, but only in the sense that they figure they should be. He's like a distant relative you only see at weddings and funerals, but you don't really know. The sister even has someone else, a family friend, organised to walk her down the aisle, since her father has passed away.


Back in the office, one of the employees fired remotely has killed themselves, turning Natalie into a wreck who resigns and goes home and putting a stop to the wireless business plan. Instead, Ryan is back on the road - but does he really want to be? Has he maybe realised that the life he is living isn't really a life at all?


There are hints of great George Clooney in the film, but only hints. The depth shown in that final scene of Michael Clayton, for example, wasn't really on offer here. He is, however, eminently watchable in anything he does. He has great charisma, so really all he needs to do is show up and it's fine. Sure, it's nice when he puts his back into it, but he doesn't really have to. Kendrick and Farmiga both shine in their respective roles, Alex as the emotionally cool older woman who knows the deal and Natalie as the fresh-faced girl with hope bursting out of every pore. And the excesses discussed are timely (flukily timely) considering the whole bad money business going on over the last couple of years - within the context of the financial crisis and subsequent near global recession it managed to function not as a reminder of better days, but a reminder of what unmitigated greed can inspire us to do.


Writer-director Jason Reitman is good at making easy-going, watchable films. Much like George Clooney. Juno was a terrific little film, and Thank You For Smoking was a good debut. This, however, just felt a little too cold, a little too distant. I enjoyed watching it, but I felt absolutely nothing for Ryan, and very little for Natalie. Surprisingly I felt for Ryan's sister and also for Alex, but when the two dominant characters are so distant from the audience emotionally, it makes it hard to buy into it. You can watch it, you can laugh at it, you can even shed tears in it (not that I think this is a cryable film, I'm just saying you could if you wanted to), but that doesn't mean you actually care. The situations can be quite sad. But you're still not crying for the people.


Ultimately I didn't feel Ryan's character arc. I saw it, I understood it was there, but I didn't feel it. Which has a little to do with Clooney and a little to do with Reitman, I think. The film didn't warm, to speak in a spurious fashion. Those cold lines and tones didn't soften. It held you at arms length to start with, and then kept you there. And so, whilst I don't regret watching it, I know I'll never see it again. Like Julie & Julia, that doesn't make it a bad film, but here especially I was hoping for something more. 2.5 stars.

I Have To Murder And Dismember A Crustacean.

Meryl Streep is a strange beast. My father loves her, he thinks anything he touches is golden. He does like watching films, but he is particularly picky and it is almost impossible to pick what he will like, but you put Meryl Streep in anything and he'll go off and watch it. I think she is a very good actress, but a lot of her more recent output makes me think of Katherine Hepburn's comment about her, about seeing the cogs behind her eyes working (to paraphrase the great Ms Hepburn.) There are, of course, fantastic exceptions. I loved her in Adaptation, and I thought her turn in The Devil Wears Prada was genius. And I've loved her in many, many movies over the years. I've probably seen her in more movies than any other actresses, which may have to do with the fact that she is, incredibly, always working. Enormous respect does have to be bestowed on her, love her or hate her, for the fact that, at 61, she is not only still a big movie star, but a huge box office draw. Sure, she very rarely headlines a film entirely on her own, and many of her roles put her opposite younger stars with significant appeal, but she's always at the top of the list. Her films manage to bring in an incredible crossover audience. I mean, according to Box Office Mojo, she has had three $100mil+ films in the last five years, with this film, Julie & Julia, getting damn close (and giving her another Oscar nomination.) There aren't many actresses full stop who can achieve that, and none that I can think of at her age. In fact, the only actress I can think of who might have more box office clout than Streep at this point is Sandra Bullock, and even then, I think a lot of people kind of go into Bullock films thinking they're going to be average, and possibly being surprised, whereas no one goes into a Streep film excepting anything less than great. I was reading, I think over at The Film Experience, some very early 2010 Oscar predictions, where they had her down as a Best Actress contender even though she is not slated to appear in any films this year, simply because she's Meryl Streep - and I don't think it's too farfetched. 

Moving on. Julie & Julia. The film is based, ostensibly, on the blog and subsequent book of one Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a young woman who, in the early days of the internet, started a blog chronicling her attempts to cook all 500 odd recipes in the iconic Julia Childs' (Streep) Mastering The Art Of French Cooking in 365 days. The blog turned into a bit of a sensation, and Powell then published the book based on the experience. Rom-com queen took up the challenge of turning the exercise into a film, merging and paralleling the travails of Powell with those of Childs. Running Childs' move with her husband Paul (Stanley Tucci), a diplomat, to his post in Paris alongside the drudgery of Powell's life with husband Eric (Chris Messina) and her challenge to herself, Ephron works them into a nice little single narrative thread. 


Childs finds herself in Paris, loving the food, but unable to find a French cookbook in English. She takes up one class to find it entirely remedial, and so enrols herself in a course for professionals, initially being scorned before setting her stubborn mind to it, practicing like buggery, and proving herself entirely capable. With a couple of friends she sets up a school, and after a while the three decide to write a book. Initially struggling to find a publisher, she eventually scores a deal back in the States, and the book is still printed to this day.


Powell is working in a cubicle in post-9/11 New York, fielding calls from people looking for compensation. The job is heartbreaking, not least for all of the tears and emotions she deals with on a day to day basis. Plus, her friends are all super-successful, and she has all but abandoned her hopes to become a writer. Craving inspiration after she and Eric move from Brooklyn to Queens (if my memory serves me correctly), she sets about writing about her attempts to cook all of these recipes, some of which are very complex, whilst still working and trying to keep her marriage stable. As the year progresses she finds herself followed by more and more people on the internet, and becomes quite a public phenomenon, leading to said book deal.


Streep does a good job of trying to step into Childs quite large shoes (she was 6'2 in real life, whereas Streep is 5'6), but I don't think she quite gets there. She seems a little awkward, and is a little too larger-than-life for me to really get into and feel her character. On the other hand, I really liked Adams as the younger, modern, more vulnerable Powell. She struggles through all of the issues related to trying to maintain her goal and her job and her life and her marriage, and as the year progresses she finds the mere task of finishing the project more of a motivation than a specific desire to actually cook the food. (I think I can relate to her a little with this project...)


The venerable Tucci plays opposite Streep again fantastically - he is seemingly bemused by Childs' dreams, but entirely supportive in a reasonably distant way, and at the same time the tones of fear at his own collapsing career come through enough to keep us in the loop without overpowering the primary narrative intent. Similarly Messina supports Adams' character well as the suffering husband who can see the end in sight but still thinks his suffering too great when confronted by the exhausted hysteria of his troubled wife.


Ephron knows what she is doing with a film like this, and she does it well. The laughs are there, the tears are there, she manipulates her audience without it ever really feeling like she is manipulating you. She's talented, especially with good material, and here she proves it. Her script also shines, deliberately overlapping lines and sentiments between the two chronologically removed stories to hit her point home, but doing it well so it never felt hamfisted or cloying.


That being said, it is just a nice film (scored wonderfully by someone named Alexandre Desplat - never heard of him.) It's not a great film, it's not one I'd watch again, probably, simply because once is enough. There's nothing really drawing me back to it. The characters were nice, the performances were good, it looked good, it flowed well, but there was no shazam. It never kicked me in the guts. Which is perfectly fine for a romantic comedy. They can't all have the heft of Notting Hill. See it for some light entertainment, but don't expect it to rock your world. 3.5 stars.