At some point during his travel to Chicago I knew she was going to be married (or at the very least, very much involved with someone else) just because they were putting so much effort into showing his effort to be with her… it set off a red flag that something more complicated than a happy ending was coming. But I didn’t really get much of a sense of it before that. Her going to the wedding was certainly a huge mislead and IMO doesn’t really ring true to me as something someone in her position would reasonably do, at least given just what was in the movie (haven’t read the book).
Saw it, loved it. Turns out the airline I work for has actually got permission to use clips for internal training films, because the POV of a road warrior is so relevant.
Loved it
2 things that it really spoke to me about:
-the firing speeches got to me after a while, especially the scene with jk simmons(the dad from juno). I think it really speaks to people in their 20’s who are new to the corp shit and are beginning to wonder if it would be better to do something they love for less $
-bago said it very well: operating on an incomplete set of assumptions. That’s my relationship pattern usually, tho i don’t think i’ve ever been hit as hard as clooney/bingham. he shoulda saw it coming especially by reading into her “i’m not some waitress you bang during a snow storm…” line.
This will go down as one of the most over-rated films of the decade. “Imagine your life as a backpack.” Really brilliant stuff there.
Something can only be over-rated if it was bad and people talked it up. Just because you didn’t like something doesn’t make it bad.
What’s your specific complaint about this? Because whatever it is, I’m pretty sure that that’s what they were intending. It’s supposed to be insipid and shallow and corny.
Is this supposed to be Ironic? “Imagine your life as a backpack” was rejected even by its protagonist as bullshit by the end. Though it is the kind of crap that people lap up at self-improvement seminars.
Saw this last night. Loved it. Couldn’t stand the soundtrack. Am I alone in that? There was maybe one song that I thought was appropriate to the movie at the time it was used, but the rest was just unbearably bad.
The family reveal was sadly predictable, but I don’t agree that Alex is a female Ryan. When that scene happens it’s clear that she’s not. She’s not as far removed from humanity as he is, but she wishes she was. It reminded me of the scene where they meet and she’s all impressed by his insane status symbols. She’s not him, but every once in a while she wishes she was. She’s also a total pretender, something he is not. Whereas Ryan throws himself fully into his lifestyle and then later into the lifestyle he thinks he wants, she fronts on being a free agent and then has a sweet home to return to. He never hides anything from her. It’s pretty twisted.
At least he’s honest about what he is. She tells him that she’s a grown-up and yet she’s the one cheating on her husband and lying about it.
The last time I flew out from Portland a couple of weeks ago the scanner guy lost his shit when I tried put my shoes in the bin like I had every other time.
Him: “Put your SHOES on the CONVEYOR belt! PUT your SHOES on the CONVEYOR BELT!”
Me: "All right, all right, relax, see? Here go my shoes on the conveyor belt.
Looking back on it now, I’m kind of surprised I wasn’t tackled on the spot considering how ramped up he was. But it was really early in the morning.
I am glad more airports are insisting on shoes going on the belt. I always resented the bins because of people’s shoes. I’m sort of a germaphobe.
I couldn’t disagree more. I absolutely love the soundtrack and listen to it constantly. The montage scene with Sad Brad Smith’s “Help Yourself” is one of my favorite from the movie and I played the song almost incessantly for a week or so after first watching the movie.
I flew out of Portland last week with my shoes in the belt and that was fine.
Then again, the TSA was probably more concerned with whether or not my iPad was some kind of terrorist device. They were kinda pissed that I left it in my bag despite the clear TSA press release from a couple days before telling me to do EXACTLY THAT.
So, y’know, what happens at any individual airport is not necessarily any kind of indication of what TSA policy actually is.
When I flew with green hair, I got pulled off of the plane to be searched a third time. When I started rocking the suit, the only complaint I got was from using 4 bins for my dual laptops, another for my shoes, and another for my coat/belt.
Netflixed it last week, and thought it was great – pretty much as good as mainstream American movies can possibly get. I will agree obliquely with our troll though that the backpack stuff was weak – not because it was (fittingly) trite, but because I could see right through to the script during those sequences. It felt shoehorned in, heavy-handed, and as written was not believable as something he could talk about for even 20 minutes.
Otherwise a terrific film.
The iPad is a terrorist device (fuck Apple)!
I’m not trying to be a dick here, but have you ever been to a conference speech like that? Stretching 5 minutes out to 20 is what these kinds of talks are all about.
Sure, I get that. But it just felt to me like we were getting all he had. It didn’t felt like anything existed outside of what we saw, whereas most of the rest of the movie created a pretty believable world. I guess I don’t go to enough shallow motivational talks.
OK, I see that. I guess it comes down to whether or not you feel the film was trying to portray Clooney as a really good motivational speaker or as a guy who just thinks he is until the final act.
The best I could say about this movie is that it was better than Juno, which I hated. It was competently acted, had a few good lines, and at the end I wondered why I had spent two hours or however long watching it.
We took this last night thinking it was a Clooney romantic comedy since the DVD back cover said it was “full of laughs”. There wasn’t much (at all) laughing but we enjoyed it.
While I sort of gathered he was heading for disaster when he was on the plane to Chicago, up until then both me and my wife felt that she wanted more of him then a casual affair, but was waiting for him to make his move. Going with him to the wedding was pretty much saying 'what about me?". Maybe she felt safe playing with that because of how she perceived him.
The firing scenes were horrible (to watch). Afterwards I talked with my wife about how I felt being fired just before we got married. I wasn’t surprised then because the company was braking apart at that time, but it was still a blow. She then reminded me that I was fired again just 3 years ago. That was after we were married and already had 1 child. I completely blocked that.
Also, I think the OP mentioned that the actress playing the young coworker is hot. The hotness in this movie is in Vera Farmiga.