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52 [Rec] 2
xx 12th & Delaware
xx 180° South
90 45365
55 8: The Mormon Proposition
xx Accidents Happen
62 After the Cup: The Sons of Sakhnin United
36 After.Life
73 Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, The
55 Agora
82 Ajami
77 Alamar
78 Anton Chekhov's The Duel
63 Around a Small Mountain
57 Audrey the Trainwreck
xx Badmaash Company
xx Barking Water
75 Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
62 Behind the Burly Q
63 Best Worst Movie
31 Black Waters of Echo's Pond, The
35 Boogie Woogie
64 Breath Made Visible: Anna Halprin
xx Brotherhood
24 Burzynski
51 Butcher's Son, The
xx Ca$h
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68 Casino Jack and the United States of Money
37 Charlie St. Cloud
xx Cheech & Chong's Hey Watch This
48 Chloe
66 City Island
52 City of Your Final Destination, The
56 Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky
58 Concert, The
xx Contenders, The
xx Convention
71 Countdown to Zero
83 Crazy Heart
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73 Cropsey
73 Cyrus
74 Daddy Longlegs
64 Disappearance of Alice Creed, The
73 Dogtooth
50 Don McKay
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67 Eclipse, The
85 Exit Through the Gift Shop
56 Extra Man, The
75 Farewell
76 Father of My Children, The
30 Finding Bliss
38 Flipped
52 Formosa Betrayed
60 Fresh
xx Fruit Fly
53 Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema
43 George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead
76 Get Low
68 Ghost Bird
77 Ghost Writer, The
68 Girl on the Train, The
66 Girl Who Played with Fire, The
xx Gone with the Pope
40 Good Heart, The
69 Good, The Bad, The Weird, The
49 Great Directors
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76 Greenberg
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24 Happiness Runs
73 Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess
55 Harry Brown
80 Have You Heard From Johannesburg?: Apartheid and the Club of the West
57 Here and There
xx Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger
51 Holy Rollers
54 Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel
32 Human Centipede (First Sequence), The
79 I Am Love
91 I Was Born, But...
33 In My Sleep
60 Infidel, The
67 It Came From Kuchar
74 Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child
79 Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
57 John Rabe
55 Joneses, The
55 Juche Idea, The
65 Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D
86 Kids Are All Right, The
53 Killer Inside Me, The
53 Killing Kasztner
44 Kimjongilia
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68 Kisses
62 Kites: The Remix
47 La Mission
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63 Lbs.
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76 Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders
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66 Looking for Eric
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64 Mother and Child
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xx My Girlfriend's Boyfriend
50 My Name is Khan
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71 Neshoba: The Price of Freedom
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xx Ocean of Pearls
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47 Perrier's Bounty
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78 Please Give
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90 Prophet, A
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43 Salt of This Sea
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81 Secret of Kells, The
73 See What I'm Saying: The Deaf Entertainers Documentary
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xx Thru the Moebius Strip
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15 To Age or Not to Age
52 Touching Home
33 Trash Humpers
59 Trotsky, The
xx Trust Us, This Is All Made Up
24 Twelve
56 Two in the Wave
62 Valhalla Rising
85 Vincere
xx Visionaries
54 Wah Do Dem
70 Warlords, The
56 What's the Matter with Kansas?
55 When You're Strange: A Film About The Doors
68 Whiz Kids
52 Who Do You Love
35 Who Killed Nancy
64 Wild Grass
xx Wild Hunt, The
56 Wildest Dream: Conquest of Everest, The
69 Winnebago Man
90 Winter's Bone
68 Women Without Men
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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Up in the Air

EMAILPRINTParamount Pictures

Up in the Air reviews
83
6.7 User Score:

Movie Info

Genre(s): Comedy  |  Drama

Written by: Jason Reitman
Sheldon Turner

Directed by: Jason Reitman

Release Date:
Theatrical: December 4, 2009
DVD: March 9, 2010

Running Time: 109 minutes, Color

Origin: USA

Summary

RATING: R for language and some sexual content

Starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, Jason Bateman, Tamala Jones, and Chris Lowell

Ryan Bingham is a corporate downsizing expert whose cherished life on the road is threatened just as he is on the cusp of reaching ten million frequent flyer miles and after he’s met the frequent-traveler woman of his dreams. (Paramount Pictures)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

The Hollywood Reporter Stephen Farber

It's rare for a movie to be at once so biting and so moving. If Ryan's future seems bleak, there's something exhilarating about a movie made with such clear-eyed intelligence.

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100

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Up in the Air is light and dark, hilarious and tragic, romantic and real. It's everything that Hollywood has forgotten how to do; we're blessed that Jason Reitman has remembered

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100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Up in the Air takes the trust people once had in their jobs and pulls out the rug. It is a film for this time.

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100

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Ryan may not be admirable, but Clooney makes him relatable. It's his deepest and nakedest performance.

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100

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Up in the Air is also optimistic about the perpetual themes that preoccupy so many movies that endure the test of time: Life is better with company. And everybody needs a co-pilot.

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100

San Francisco Chronicle Amy Biancolli

Crisply funny and fleetly paced, it's in its quiet way one of the saddest things in the theaters all year.

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100

USA Today Claudia Puig

Timeliness can be tricky to pull off convincingly in movies. It's tough to capture an era while it's still happening, yet Up in the Air does so brilliantly, with wit and humanity.

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100

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

A smart, alert, supremely entertaining movie.

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100

New York Post Lou Lumenick

One of the year's best films and so tapped into the zeitgeist that it's positively scary.

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100

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Up in the Air makes it look easy. Not just in its casual and apparently effortless excellence, but in its ability to blend entertainment and insight, comedy and poignancy, even drama and reality, things that are difficult by themselves but a whole lot harder in combination. This film does all that and never seems to break a sweat.

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100

Time Richard Corliss

Reitman's blend of comedy and drama, romance and social observation make Up in the Air the ideal movie --- and maybe even a cure -- for the Great Recession blues.

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100

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams

Up in the Air may not end up as the best picture -- that will be decided by the Academy -- but it has landed in the middle of the discussion because it's laser-focused and right on time.

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100

Empire Ian Nathan

This is smart, silky, sensitive, and funny old-school movie magic.

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91

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

This is a movie about, among other things, pain, and it's made by someone who understands its expression.

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90

Newsweek David Ansen

There hasn't been a studio movie as unapologetically adult, sophisticated, and nuanced as Up in the Air in some time.

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90

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The best of Up in the Air--meaning most of it--is right up there with the fresh and sophisticated comedies of Hollywood's golden age.

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90

Variety Todd McCarthy

The timing in the Clooney-Farmiga scenes is like splendid tennis, with each player surprising the other with shots but keeping the rally going to breathtaking duration.

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90

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Up in the Air is poised to be a smash, and Clooney--slim, dark, perfectly tailored--glamorizes insincerity in a way that makes you want to go out and lie.

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88

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

One-word reaction: bravo.

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88

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Reitman brings the same mixture of comedy and drama to this movie that he brought to "Juno."

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83

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

For much of its going, Up in the Air moves with the same refreshing pace and attitude that marked Reitman’s “Thank You for Smoking” and “Juno” -- with the added frisson that the subject matter is so torn-from-the-headlines that it feels, in a good way, like reality TV.

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80

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Perhaps it's no surprise that Reitman has come out with a lovely Hollywood romance that floats buoyantly along on a sea of sadness.

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80

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

One of the pleasures of Up in the Air is that its actresses share the frame with Mr. Clooney as equals, not props

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80

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The film is a hybrid. Its backdrop is despair, but the foreground action has the silvery zest of a comedy.

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80

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

If Steven Soderbergh taught Clooney how to act in "Out of Sight," then Reitman has taught him how to stop acting. This is the most vulnerable, the most playful, the most human performance of his career.

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78

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

The middle is terrific, especially in a lengthy, unassuming scene in which the three leads sit, sip drinks, and have a good chat: It marks one of the great celluloid pleasures of the year, so virtuosically written, performed, and filmed is it.

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75

Premiere Michael Mariani

A smart, brisk, but extremely thoughtful hybrid of star-vehicle and resonant depiction of right-now America.

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75

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

As for the implicit tragedy amidst the funny business, the swelling ranks of the unemployed, the movie has no solution but instead offers itself as implicit solace: Escape, ye wretches, into my clever humour and my nifty dialogue and my star's considerable charm.

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75

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Farmiga has never been better than she is here. Rarely does she get to do comedy, and she and Clooney give Up in the Air's sustained air of engaging disengagement a heartbeat as well as a romantic charge.

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75

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

At its best, Up in the Air invents new realms for old Hollywood sophistication.

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75

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

What Up In The Air lacks in surprises--apart from an elusive final scene--it compensates for by conveying the pleasures of living from landing to landing, and the terror of floating away.

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70

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Reitman deserves credit for going through with a bitterly ironic ending, but the movie is marred by its warm condescension toward flyover country.

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50

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Up in the Air goes down like a sedative. This is a movie that's easy to like--and to dislike as well.

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50

Slate Dana Stevens

Full of clever one-liners, winning performances, and wistful indie music. It's impossible not to like it, which is precisely what's so annoying about it.

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50

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Comes off not as topical but as opportunist. The picture is brushed with a fine glaze of slickness, a product sealed in a blister pack. It's like airplane air -- it has a packaged freshness that isn't really fresh at all.

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40

Time Out New York Keith Uhlich

Reitman, who also cowrote the screenplay, feels the constant need to “deepen” his characters, granting them wants and motivations--especially during the moralistic third act--that are totally alien to how they’re initially portrayed.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 6.7 (out of 10) based on 224 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Rebecca T gave it an8:
I loved this movie. Ryan's character is so much like myself. That's not the reason I love it, it's just a very well-put together film. =)

Phil gave it a1:
Dreadful. trite. what are you watching that you can rate this a good movie? i'd rather watch paint dry.

Bobo gave it a3:
Am I the only one who was restless (bored) by this movie? Clooney saved it-just barely-and even he was getting on my nerves.

Aaron gave it a0:
WORST MOVIE EVER MADE (next to The Godfather and Angels in America) JUST horrible, depressing, stupid, George Clooney, Anna Kendrick was SOOO ANNOYING! "wah!wah!" i almost did that crying scene that Anna Kendrick did when the movie was over! RAZZIE AWARD WINNER IN MY OPIONION way overrated!

Doodle T gave it a6:
Film is going well until Detroit. Then it deflates into cheap propaganda. The 'existential' ending makes no sense. Nothing gained from watching this. Ryan is who we thought he was!

Stan A gave it a10:
The best film of the year. Anna Kendrick is going to be huge. She simply invigorated every one of her scenes and was unforgettable. If you really hated this film then either the subject matter has no meaning for you - astonishing given the current economy - or you have absolutely no understanding of cinema . As for the guy who left after 30 minutes and then has the gall to tell us this film was a train wreck, at least I read your entire review before I concluded that you're an idiot.

alx m gave it a2:
I wanted to watch this movie after the Academy nominations. I kept waiting for it to improve but then it ended and left me feeling like I had just wasted 2 hrs. I am a big fan of G-Clooney but this is one was poor.

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