Up In The Air and Paradox reviews

[alobear]

I enjoyed Up In The Air - it was entertaining, thought-provoking, well made and performed.  However, it did fall back on the age-old idea that you need to find the right relationship to make you happy.  While I am very much a believer that the right relationship can increase your happiness, I also believe that people can be happy on their own, and also that they need to be happy on their own before they can really be happy with someone else.  So, it was a shame that the single lifestyle was yet again presented as lacking.  Still, I was delighted with the film's spectacular avoidance of a classic romantic cliche, which I had been fearing from the start and was sidestepped very neatly.


Paradox by John Meaney, on the other hand, turned into a bit of an incomprehensible slog for the last 150 pages, which was a shame as I had been rather enjoying it up until then.  The background and set up of the story were very entertaining - it was just the overly complex and techno-babble-ridden plot that derailed my motivation.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I think I have to disagree that the film presented the single lifestyle per se as lacking: the main character was shown to have no meaningful relationships *of any kind* at the start of the film (with family or friends, as well as romantic), and this would seem to me to be a recipe for unhappiness in all but a very few people. (I completely agree with everything you say about being single in the romantic sense and happy, and get irked with films that imply otherwise.) Perhaps they could have done more to examine his issues in platonic ways rather than through a love interest, though the latter is easier (lazier?) to do plot-wise. Having said that, I too was delighted with the ending :-)

It was also implied that the young girl (name escapes me) was much happier single and pursuing her own career than when she had compromised to follow her boyfriend/naive idea of marriage, and Alex hardly seemed completely fulfilled in her life, despite being married. So it's not as if being in a relationship was presented as the solution to everything: more that it is best to not close yourself off entirely from other people.

It's a while since I saw it (Christmas Day), so I could also be mis-remembering it somewhat. Anyhow, glad you liked it!

Lx

[alobear.livejournal.com]

You are absolutely right about the three main characters.

I guess I was just annoyed by the closing montage of recently redundant people saying how their family gave them purpose. That will indeed be true of a lot of people, and it's certainly true that family is more important than a job, but it just seemed a little heavy-handed and contrary to the more balanced message of the rest of the film.

[(Anonymous)]

I had completely forgotten about that closing montage! I told you it had been a while since I saw it...