Jason Reitman made a name for himself (outside of trading
on his father’s name) by directing two sort of quirky small-scale
character-driven comedy-dramas. Thank You
for Smoking and Juno both had
enough oddball screwiness to their premises and characters to get noticed. But
Reitman’s third feature, Up in the Air,
based on the novel by Walter Kirn, for which Reitman shares screenwriting
credit with Sheldon Turner, his attention is turned toward real life drama.
This is a film about a man whose job is to go into other companies to tell
their employees that they’ve been laid off so that the bosses don’t have to get
their hands dirty.
