Cloontastic!

Up in the Air, with it's A-List cast and of-the-moment director, has little in common with the tiny indie pic Humpday. If you wanted to be a dick about it, you could say that the only similarity they share is that I happened to see both of them within a day of each other.. What makes them alike, however, is the way they use imperfection to elevate their respective concepts.

Humpday, for example, has been favorably compared to a Judd Apatow film, and on the face of it, it's apt: this is a buddy-comedy, complete with plenty of crude jokes and a lack of screen time for female cast members. The plot is maybe a bit edgy for the Apatow crew, however: best-friends Andrew (Joshua Leonard) and Ben (Mark Duplass) get drunk at a party with people who are cooler than they are, and in order to prove their worthiness to the crowd they agree to make good on a dare to sleep with one another for an amateur porn festival. Thing is, they're both straight as arrows (the film doesn't even hint at any possibility of latency), and haven't the slightest idea how that would actually go down. For the married, settled down Ben, this represents what he takes to be one of his last opportunities to push himself beyond his comfort zone. For Andrew, acquiescing to the dare is a no-brainer if he is to maintain the fragile grip he has on the more bohemian, open-minded image he has of himself.

I won't get into how it all ends up, but what makes it work is the fact that we're looking at normal people here: Leonard and Duplass are unabashedly lumpen and shlubby, polar opposites of a shiny Paul Rudd. (And don't get me started on Seth Rogan. Sure he's as shubby as it gets, but pair him with the likes of Katherine Heigl or Elizabeth Banks and any claim he has to everyman-ness goes out the window in an instant). And their conversation matches their appearance: the dialog is mostly ad-libbed, and the whole thing has an air of genuiness and sincerity that carries the entire film.

Up in the Air, on the other hand, has no shortage of polish. George Clooney, as a corporate consultant flown around the country to fire people, is perfect. Writer/director Jason Reitman wrote the female lead's role with Vera Farmiga in mind, so she's perfect of course. Natalie Keener, 24 years old and matching Clooney line-for-line makes me feel unaccomplished and lame at 27. The story is tight and the dialogue is sharp. It's ironic then that what elevates the entire picture is the much-discussed use of decidedly un-perfect looking non-actors who have recently lost their real jobs in the roles of the fire-es (with the exception of 20 seconds of perfection from Zach Galifinakis). Every line they utter and face they make echoes with real emotion.  Again, it's this level of sincerity that adds needed depth to what would otherwise be another just-ok Hollywood romance.