Up in the Air

Rating: ****

The thing about Up in the Air is that you shouldn’t like its main character: professional pink slip distributor Ryan Bingham. You shouldn’t find him funny, you shouldn’t find him interesting and you certainly shouldn’t be rooting for him. Ryan is a symptom of a spineless corporate system that cares more about making sure fired employees don’t make a fuss then they do about the fact their loyal workers are losing their jobs. There’s an interesting comparison between Ryan Bingham and the protagonist of the first film by director Jason Reitman, Thank You for Smoking. Like cigarette company spin doctor Nick Naylor, Ryan knows what he is, has made peace with it, and perhaps even revels in it.

Reitman’s third film is another bittersweet comedy. This one is about someone that leads what many would consider a sad, sad life of constant air travel and living out of a single suit case. So naturally, Ryan Bingham (played by George Clooney) thinks he’s got it made in the shade. He spends, in total, less than three months a year on the ground at the home office of his company in Omaha Nebraska, and the rest of the time he flies from city to city professionally firing people for corporate execs too spineless to do it themselves. But Ryan finds himself forced to think more about his life on the ground for two reasons. First, his company is considering the implementation of teleconference firings as opposed to sending someone in person, thus ending Ryan’s 250 days a year of travel. The second is Ryan’s growing attraction to Alex (Vera Farmiga), a fellow corporate jet-setter whom he passes like a ship in the night occasionally.

Typically in a movie like this, it would dawn on Ryan that his baggage-less lifestyle would be hollow and empty. His philosophy, which he shares at an occasional self-help seminar, is to picture all the things that tie you down – friends, family, a house, and possessions – and stuff them all into a backpack and set that thing on fire. As the story unfolds, one might think that Ryan would come to realize that even carrying around a small backpacked filled with a few life attachments would be okay. But in screenwriting parlance though that would be playing it safe and while Ryan doesn’t get a complete transformation, he does begin to re-evaluate a couple of things. It’s to Clooney’s credit as a talented and charismatic actor that Ryan doesn’t come off as a cold-hearted jerk but rather an honest broker of his personal belief in living out of a single suitcase.

The other half of the equation is the subplot about the business of firing people. And though it’s far from a Wall Street like condemnation of corporate culture, one can easily appreciate the humour in how an entity as indifferent as Corporate America can take something as cold and distant as firing someone and add the internet to equation. This idea is cooked up by Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick). Natalie, a newcomer to Ryan’s employer, though eager to please is actually green in the practical business of firing people for a living. But under Ryan’s tutelage she learns his backpack philosophy and that handing out pink slips isn’t as easy as reading the approved script you’re given during job training. If Clooney is the brash and direct centre of the film, then Kendrick, who’s best known as Bella’s fast-talking friend Jessica in the Twilight movies, is the proverbial straight woman, holding her own against Clooney and creating her own unique character voice as well.

Up in the Air is an uncomfortable twist on the times with many people who have been fired or laid off in real life playing the unwitting victims of Ryan’s fire-for-hire sharpshooter. There’s a resonance in here that’s hard to shake, and in a way is a black comedy about the suffering of people living on the economic bubble and the clearly masochistic nature of Ryan’s vocation. Like Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko, Ryan Bingham just seems to be, and fortunately Reitman spares us some kind of reckoning or recompense for Ryan and his lifestyle choice. Does he get a wake-up call? Absolutely, but the question is: will it stick? After the credits roll, does he try to make a change, or like so many people stuck in a rut will he find it just easier to stop squirming? Up in the Air is an often humourous ode to being stuck in your ways, and not really knowing how or why or if you might get yourself out of it.

Extract

Rating: ***

After experimenting with subtle social and political commentary with Idiocracy, writer/director Mike Judge returns to the workplace with his latest comedy Extract. Does it trace the same fertile ground as his cult classic Office Space? Yeah, kind of. If only in the details. It’s probably different enough to pass scrutinization but one can’t help but get the feeling of a filmmaker scrabbling to return to what works after going so far out on a limb with his last effort. (For the record, the complete failure of Idiocracy does astound me, but fault is probably owed more to the studio than to Judge or anyone else involved.) On its own though, Extract squeezes quite a few laughs and has some genuinely funny performances.

But first, let’s get the comparisons out of the way. Wacky neighbour? Check. Dysfunctional co-workers? Double check. A really good looking, unobtainable romantic character? You better believe it. A dim-witted best friend full of not-so-helpful suggestions? You better believe it. Work place dilemma that risks bringing down the whole company and our hero? Pretty much there in the liner notes. An ending that’s kind of pat and rather sentimental despite much of the movie’s main plot? Well, that certainly wasn’t entirely true in the case of Office Space, but I will say that that earlier movie didn’t have the killer, twisted ending that Extract does. And when I say killer, I do mean killer.

The Extract of the title is an extract plant owned and operated by Joel (Jason Bateman), a man frustrated by borderline incompetence at the office and a lack of sexual contact with his wife (Kristen Wiig) at home. But Joel sees light at the end of the tunnel. General Mills it seems is interested in buying the plant, which means big bucks and retirement for Joel and his eager partner Brian (J.K. Simmons). But then a couple of odd developments occur: one of the plant’s workers, Step (Clifton Collins Jr.), gets in an accident that results in, ahem, some serious depreciation of his manhood, which results in a temp worker named Cindy (Mila Kunis) making her voluptuous appearance at the plant.

Naturally though, Cindy’s a low rent con woman looking to make a score off Step’s misfortune by pushing him to sue the plant rather than take an insurance settlement. Step’s attorney is a Cellino & Barnes style shyster played by Gene Simmons, and yes, I do mean that Gene Simmons who doesn’t turn out as disappointing a casting choice as I initially reckoned. Indeed, he seems to throw himself in the part. Same goes for Ben Affleck as Dean, who finds a definite niche doing good laid back stoner. With curly locks, scruffy beard and chill disposition it’s almost hard to believe we’re looking at the same Affleck. Way to go, dude! If anyone deserves to get righteous and stay righteous as an actor, it’s Affleck. We’re pulling for you, buddy.

But we’re also pulling for a movie that can mean something more than some cheap, good laughs that linger in our heads after we leave the movie theatre. We’re looking for a story and characters that resonate, like in Office Space and Milton’s plight being a man constantly shifted around the building and having his stapler stolen in a Jungian effort to get him to quit rather than making a scene with his firing. No, I’m afraid Brad the Gigolo’s falling for Joel’s wife after he’s hired by Joel to seduce her so that he can sleep with Cindy guilt free, which came about with some help from Dean the impressionable state brought on after the accidental ingestion of a horse tranquilizer. Kind of a mouthful right? And not having a resolution doesn’t help either. At least in Office Space Peter finds some equilibrium in the end. Joel, I guess, just finds peace with the things that were making him miserable, in which case Extract isn’t comedy, it’s reality.