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53
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84
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53
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22
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30
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55
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56
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72
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56
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56
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51
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45
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23
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65
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61
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30
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63
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74
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79
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74
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57
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33
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52
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61
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66
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21
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46
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20
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33
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31
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50
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43
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30
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35
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75
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64
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38
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47
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51
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50
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56
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40
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53
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65
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67
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27
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46
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58
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63
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46
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66
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92
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58
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44
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43
Why Did I Get Married Too
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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73
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55
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82
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78
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63
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57
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75
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62
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63
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35
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67
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59
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68
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48
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66
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56
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83
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51
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66
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67
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85
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56
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75
Farewell
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30
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38
Flipped
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60
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53
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43
George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead
76
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68
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77
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68
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66
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40
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69
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76
Greenberg
59
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24
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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
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Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger
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Holy Rollers
54
Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel
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79
I Am Love
91
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In My Sleep
60
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67
It Came From Kuchar
74
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child
79
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57
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55
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65
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53
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44
Kimjongilia
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La Mission
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Law, The
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Lbs.
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72
Let It Rain
70
Life During Wartime
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76
Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders
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Malice in Wonderland
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47
Metropia
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75
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64
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75
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35
Multiple Sarcasms
65
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My Girlfriend's Boyfriend
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My Name is Khan
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Nature of Existence, The
71
Neshoba: The Price of Freedom
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71
No One Knows About Persian Cats
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Nobody’s Perfect
72
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65
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59
Only When I Dance
58
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37
Paper Man
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68
Patrik Age 1.5
40
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42
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47
Perrier's Bounty
48
Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies
78
Please Give
31
Pornography: A Thriller
41
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90
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xx
Raajneeti
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Raavan
78
Racing Dreams
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Ramchand Pakistani
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Red Birds
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Reel Injun
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Restrepo![]()
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Road, Movie
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Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead
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Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage
43
Salt of This Sea
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See What I'm Saying: The Deaf Entertainers Documentary
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Severe Clear
57
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
52
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48
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77
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68
Smash His Camera
69
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22
Standing Ovation
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Tirador
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Trust Us, This Is All Made Up
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Twelve
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85
Vincere![]()
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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
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Wild Hunt, The
56
Wildest Dream: Conquest of Everest, The
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Winnebago Man
90
Winter's Bone![]()
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Women Without Men
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World on a Wire
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Up in the Air

Universal acclaim
Based on 36 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 224 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
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)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Juno Thank You For Smoking
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
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...
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.
Read Full Review >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
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Ryan may not be admirable, but Clooney makes him relatable. It's his deepest and nakedest performance.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
One of the year's best films and so tapped into the zeitgeist that it's positively scary.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Empire Ian Nathan
This is smart, silky, sensitive, and funny old-school movie magic.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
This is a movie about, among other things, pain, and it's made by someone who understands its expression.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
There hasn't been a studio movie as unapologetically adult, sophisticated, and nuanced as Up in the Air in some time.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Reitman brings the same mixture of comedy and drama to this movie that he brought to "Juno."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Premiere Michael Mariani
A smart, brisk, but extremely thoughtful hybrid of star-vehicle and resonant depiction of right-now America.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
At its best, Up in the Air invents new realms for old Hollywood sophistication.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
