** SPOILER ALERT!
George Clooney is great in this and completely embodies his laid-bad, non-committal hatchet-man. He makes it look so easy. Watching him train his over-zealous underling, Anna Kendrick, is the nucleus of the story and these are the best scenes in the movie. When he’s met his match in a female counterpart, Vera Farmiga, the possibilities are infinite and it’s a delight to watch it all unfold. But then, two-thirds of the way through, his character becomes secondary and passive while we’re forced to sit through a bunch of wedding-movie clichés involving a bunch of peripheral characters we don’t care about. What a downer. The movie never fully recovers from this awkward detour. It starts to get clunky and predicable until it finally just fizzles out. Clooney’s final scenes redeem it a little, but it still leaves a bad taste, especially knowing how good the first two-thirds were. Despite the bad plot detours, though, it’s a must see for Clooney and Kendrick, and the way they navigate the sad world of layoffs rampant in this shitty financial era.
Respectfully Sir: What movie were you watching? The last third is the meat of the movie. Yes he is passive… but that is because his life has taken this detour. He has been grounded and he is floundering. He is unaccustomed to the way other people live their lives. He has trouble interacting with them. But he certainly isn’t secondary. Name one scene involving these “Peripheral” characters that Clooney isn’t in.
ReplyDeleteYes there are the wedding clichés… because that sets up the impact of Clooney, playing the Hugh Grant character, racing to get the girl… only to discover the girl isn’t there for him. He has spent his career telling people that losing their job is a chance at a second act… a new life. But there is no second act for him. It’s a lie. He can’t have the small town life, he can’t have the house and the loyal wife.
For him, there is only his life in the air. He has spent all these years, listening to people who have made their work their life. Listening to how broken they become when it is taken from them. And when he is grounded, he has a similar experience. And he faces the grim realization that his life in the air is all there is for him.