TIFF 2009 Day 2: Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air

Unlike the slew of journalists who’ve been championing the film since Telluride and now TIFF, I’m less convinced of Up in the Air‘s Oscar potential when you measure it up against another TIFF comedy (the Coen Brother’s A Serious Man) which gets the tone right and has so much more going for it. I’m making this sound like I’m a naysayer, there is plenty to appreciate, Clooney was spot on and could grab a Oscar nom as a modern day Cary Grant, and Jason Reitman adds a lot more subtext than what is apparently offered in the novel, but I didn’t much care for the more attempted mature aspects in the final act, especially when the middle portion has Anna Kendrick’s character turning to mush and unconvincingly jabs into Clooney’s character – who decides to fill up his empty packsack. I wished that those docu interviews at the end could have come sooner, than later.