We always know just where this film is going... . But as co-written and directed by Jason Reitman, the plot's twists are so delicious and the dialogue so inventively perfect it doesn't matter a jot.

A slick, cute, diverting, superbly-acted film but also an empty one due to the picture's raison d'être: a one-trick pony concerned solely with lack of commitment.

Up in the Air is sentimental, but that doesn't mean it's simplistic. In fact, the movie plays at some interesting contradictions. It is a genuinely funny movie about genuinely depressing times.

It’s less flashy than Clooney’s work in “The Descendants” two years later, but it’s every bit as heartbreaking.