Capsule reviews of films playing the week of March 3 

Page 5 of 6

UP IN THE AIR In the cinema of 2009, Ryan Bingham should by all accounts emerge as the Protagonist Least Likely To Be Embraced By The Nation's Moviegoers. That's because Ryan works as a downsizing expert, hired to come in and dismiss employees that their own bosses are too gutless to fire face to face. Ryan is excellent at his job, which would make him the antagonist in virtually any other film. But because he's played by charismatic George Clooney, Ryan becomes less a villain and more a representative of the modern American, a tech-age person trying to reconcile his buried humanity with what he or she believes is necessary to survive in this increasingly disconnected world. That's the starting point for this superb adaptation of Walter Kirn's novel, but the film covers a lot more territory -- both literally and figuratively -- before it reaches the finish line. As Ryan jets all over the country doing his job, he makes the acquaintance of a fellow frequent flyer (Vera Farmiga), and they strike up a romance that's among the sexiest and most adult placed on screen in some time. Yet Ryan's carefully constructed life threatens to crash and burn when his company's latest hire (Anna Kendrick), a whiz kid just out of college, implements a plan that will require the grounding of all employees, including Ryan. Penning the script with Sheldon Turner, director Jason Reitman (now 3-for-3 following Juno and Thank You for Smoking) has created a timely seriocomic work that manages to be breezy without once diminishing the sobering realities that constantly hover around the picture's edges (for starters, the fired employees interviewed in the film are not actors but real workers who were let go from their jobs). Farmiga and Kendrick are excellent as the two women who unexpectedly alter the direction of Ryan's life, yet it's Clooney, in his best screen work to date, who's most responsible for earning this magnificent movie its wings. ****

VALENTINE'S DAY Like the holiday it celebrates (cheapens?), Valentine's Day is made for couples, which perhaps explains the fastidious casting of twofers throughout its principal roster. There are two actors from Grey's Anatomy (Patrick Dempsey, Eric Dane), two from That '70s Show (Ashton Kutcher, Topher Grace), two from Alias (Jennifer Garner, Bradley Cooper), two named Jessica (Alba, Biel), two named Taylor (Lautner, Swift), two from the Roberts clan (Julia, Emma), and other convenient couplings. It's more exhausting to track than any conceivable game of Six Degrees of Separation. With such a wide range of talent on view, It's not surprising that the performances are all over the map almost as much as a screenplay that finds the connecting thread between roughly a dozen stories and then proceeds to tie them all together with one unseemly bow. And as is often the case with anthology-style works, some segments work better than others: I could have used more scenes with Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper (as strangers sitting together on an airplane) or with Anne Hathaway and Topher Grace (as a phone-sex provider and her unsuspecting boyfriend), and less with Jessica Biel (as a lonely woman who hates the holiday) or with the Taylors (as lovestruck high school kids). Jennifer Garner is fine as a trusting teacher who's being duped by her married lover (Patrick Dempsey), but she unfortunately has to spend ample screen time with Ashton Kutcher (as her best friend), who seems incapable of walking and acting at the same time. Were Valentine's Day not such a tissue-thin confection, its underlying content might be troubling. For example, a kiss between an interracial couple is seen not directly but on a fuzzy television monitor, while a smooch between two homosexuals is presented off-camera. Meanwhile, the only two characters not involved whatsoever in all the lovey-dovey exploits are both overweight women (Kathy Bates and Queen Latifah). With its cast of young and old, veteran and novice, the demographically friendly Valentine's Day boldly asserts that it's a film made for everyone, but look closely and you'll find a center as squishy as that of a melted chocolate caramel nougat. **

THE WOLFMAN Loosely based on the 1941 classic The Wolf Man, this disappointing new take casts Benicio Del Toro in Lon Chaney Jr.'s iconic role of Lawrence Talbot, the British-born nobleman who returns to his family estate after spending most of his life in the United States. Estranged from his aloof father, Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins), Lawrence prefers the company of his late brother's fiancee, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt), but he fears for her safety after a wound from a ferocious creature periodically turns him into a monster. Although he's physically right for the role, Del Toro's line readings are unbearably stilted, and he brings none of the playfulness that Chaney contributed in his rendition. In short, he's a brooding bore. Fresh from triumphing as the title character in The Young Victoria, Blunt is alarmingly one-note, hampered by a sketchy part that allows her to do little more than pout and fret. As for Hopkins, he's clearly indifferent to the whole project, and one suspects his eyes kept darting back and forth between the dopey script in one hand and the hefty paycheck in the other as he mulled over whether to accept the part. The makeup design by Rick Baker is excellent, although the transformation scenes aren't nearly as thrilling as the pivotal one in 1981's An American Werewolf in London (for which Baker won the first of his six Oscars). Yet what sinks the film on the technical side is the abundance of CGI effects; these simply come off as (no pun intended) overkill, with Johnston pouring on the gore in an effort to disguise the fact that the picture contains nothing in the way of genuine suspense or scares. Johnston's heavy use of cheap "gotcha!" moments (i.e. when the setting is quiet and then something suddenly LEAPS! into the frame or DASHES! across the screen) likewise points to his inability to coax any authentic reactions out of audience members, who will probably be too busy tittering at the risible dialogue anyway to concentrate on much else. As for the epic battle pitting werewolf versus werewolf -- well, let's just say it couldn't be any less frightening had the filmmakers elected to pit Pekingese against Poodle. *1/2