Up In The Air vs You've Got Mail

Ryan Bingham is a man living in the full embrace of technology. Or maybe it’s the other way around. The spring-loaded handle and swiveling wheels of his carry-on are an extension of his arm. He loves the swoosh of swiping his credit card, the quick check-in at airports, and his phone. So lest anyone think Ryan represents the old school in Up in the Air, be forewarned: he’s comfortable in his time.

Ryan’s job involves traveling city to city, informing the employees of downsizing corporations that they’ve been let go. He’s like a hitman for firing. He doesn’t work for any of the companies in question, and is gone before the dust settles. Ryan doesn’t have a permanent home, a relationship, a pet, or more than two or three changes of clothes, and he is happy. Ryan is played by George Clooney, in the most thoughtful, casually layered performance in a career that gets more interesting with each passing year.

Ryan’s job is threatened somewhat by a young upstart at his company, Natalie (Anna Kendrick), who introduces the idea of downsizing via computer. The employee to be fired and the downsizing agent will sit down at webcams in their respective cities. The news will be broken, and everyone carries on with his or her day, never having stepped on a plane. Natalie’s idea is embraced by their boss (Jason Bateman), but put to the test when she’s assigned to a trip with Ryan first, to get a handle for how the job is performed in person.

Initially, Ryan and Natalie have a funny odd-couple relationship. He makes her downsize her luggage (see what I did there?) from suitcases to a wheeled carry-on, throwing away her pillows and schooling her on the art of packing. They’re not unlike the characters of The Messenger. An older seen-it-all pro who knows the shorthand and logistics of the job from experience, and the younger recruit, out to prove the job’s as easy as it looks. If Up in the Air were a straight comedy, Clooney and Kendrick would carry it with their banter alone. It’s more than that, of course, since their job is one of such disappointment. A good day is one in which you fired everyone you wanted to, and they handled it well. That’s still kind of a bad day, I’d wager.

Every couple cities, Ryan meets up with Alex (Vera Farmiga), a traveling businesswoman with a life and attitude similar to his. She’s smart and dryly funny, sexy, efficient, and modern. Ryan and Alex plan their trysts around their flight schedules, and text when they can’t be together. In the film’s sweetest and most revealing sequence, Ryan brings Alex along to his sister’s wedding. Ryan barely knows his siblings, but he barely knows Alex either. Ryan refuses to identify himself as alone or lonely, but here he is, surrounded by so-called loved ones, everyone at an arm’s length.

Up in the Air is the best movie so far by Jason Reitman, and one of the best of 2009. Like Thank You for Smoking and Juno, it’s got quick dialogue, isn’t condescending about the Midwest, and underplays big emotional moments with realism and sarcasm. Up in the Air is more sincere than either of those movies, thankfully, given its bleak subject matter. The firings feature a mix of real unemployed Americans (many cast from Detroit and St. Louis) and character actors (J.K. Simmons and Zach Galifianakas stand out), and are never played as comedy, even when they’re funny. Kendrick delivers in these scenes, especially the one in which she gets her way, firing an employee via computer (he’s sitting in the next room). The locations are carefully filmed, with each hotel room and airport looking like…hotel rooms and airports (when you see Up in the Air, you’ll realize how often movies fake hotel rooms badly).  Clooney, Farmiga and Kendrick have a scene in a hotel ballroom, crashing a convention being entertained by Young MC, that is the first thing I’ll watch when I buy the dvd.

You’ve Got Mail is also a movie in touch with its time, a story of downsizing, a comedy, and a romance. But for every time Up in the Air views technology as a slick necessity, You’ve Got Mail gets all wide-eyed and alternately charmed or suspicious. And while Up in the Air’s lovers have seen it all, You’ve Got Mail features two characters who appear at once elderly and teenaged.

You’ve Got Mail, of course, was the romantic comedy reunion of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. And I’m not here to be cool and tell you Up in the Air is good and You’ve Got Mail is bad, just because You’ve Got Mail’s primary objective seems to be cuteness.  Hey, I’m the guy who forwarded that shocked kitty video to all his friends. I can handle cute. What I have a little trouble with is the stock male/female dynamic, especially from two actors who were already so established. Can’t Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan lug something a little weightier than “He’s a guy, he likes The Godfather. She’s a chick, she likes Joni Mitchell” ?

Tom Hanks plays the head of a massive corporate bookstore, moving into the neighborhood where Meg Ryan operates her small, children’s bookstore. He’s running her out of business, but doesn’t seem to be threatening her livelihood so much as insulting her principles. She’s got a huge, beautiful apartment, and I don’t recall a single mention of her worrying she might lose it. Her anger stems mainly from it being wrong for little stores to be killed by big ones. She’s pining for a simpler time, see, romanticizing the past, which is surely her right, and something I’m guilty of from time to time. And it’s not like Meg’s character (Annie? Abby? Claire? Something.) doesn’t live in the present (well, in 1998 anyway). She logs on every night and makes sweet with her AOL chat buddy, who is, of course, Tom Hanks. It’s weird though, that since they’re strangers online, they don’t cut loose more. I’m not saying they have to get busy over chat like Clooney and Farmiga do with texting, but come on. They’re so coy and friendly you’d think they were in a PG Nora Ephron movie or something.

Which isn’t to say that You’ve Got Mail isn’t funny at times (Hanks and Ryan have chemistry, duh, but the movie works because of their comic timing) or deftly filmed (there’s a really great moment early on with Ryan and Hanks walking to work and unknowingly crossing each others paths). It’s just that after Up in the Air, you might wanna shake the characters of You’ve Got Mail.  They each have jobs they love, but only one of them lives in the real world. And they’re each already with partners perfect for them (Meg Ryan has a supportive Greg Kinnear; Tom Hanks has a high-maintenance Parker Posey), but they’re distracted by a more romantic, Hollywood notion of the lives they’re already living. You’ve Got Mail is cute, but it needs to streamline its life into a carry-on, if you know what I mean.

Up in the Air: A

You’ve Got Mail: B