Up in the Air 'Darkly Hilarious'

George Clooney stars as a frequent-flying corporate axeman-for-hire in Up In the Air, a dramedy that was too slick for some critics but was ranked among the best of the year by many.

• "It's rare for a movie to be at once so biting and so moving," writes Stephen Farber at the Hollywood Reporter. "Before the movie plunges into deeper waters, it seduces us with some of the most darkly hilarious moments to grace the screen in years."

• Jason Reitman's adaptation of Walter Kirn's 2001 novel is "perfectly tailored to Clooney's melancholy twinkle and purring motormouth," writes Carrie Rickey at the Philadelphia Inquirer. "I don't know if it's the best movie of the year, but it's the most utterly enjoyable."
• Up in the Air is actually several good movies —a workplace comedy, romantic comedy, and family comedy—seated on the same flight in the same aisle," Wesley Morris writes at the Boston Globe, and they seem a little too forced together.

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