‘Up in the Air’ easily soars as one of this season’s best films

“Up In the Air” excels because it is down to earth.

Films, especially those featuring big honking Hollywood movie stars, are rarely both playful and about real life. The ones that honestly examine day-to-day problems or relationships can be thought-provoking, well-crafted or absorbing, maybe. But personal dramas tend to reflect the gravity that comes with the familiar grind of human existence and aren’t often exactly pleasurable to watch.

But in combining George Clooney’s indefatigable charm and wit with the director-writer who brought us “Juno,” the definitive example of cinema both verite and fun, “Up in the Air” is a relevant delight. What Jason Reitman did for teenage pregnancy and female romantic longing last time, he does here for recessionary downsizing and male commitment phobia: He finds the lightness while not denying the darkness of such tribulations by enlisting the audience as allies for his sarcastic, outwardly fierce but ultimately vulnerable characters.

Adapted from the novel by Walter Kirn, this tragicomedy examines the jet-set lifestyle of a man hired to fire. Clooney’s Ryan Bingham lives out of a precisely packed carry-on and wields his frequent-flier cards like a grinning samurai. He’s the blithely unattached and detached nomadic superstar of a company that specializes in doing the dirty work for companies too chicken to do it themselves.

But two things happen to shake up the confirmed bachelor, who sacks other people’s employees as casually as he picks up a beautiful woman at a hotel bar: He begins to fall for Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), his female counterpart in cool attitude and traveler legerdemain. And Ryan’s boss (Jason Bateman) hires a young turk, technology whiz Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), to experiment with a cheaper business model: firing by way of video chat.

Ryan is charged with teaching newbie Natalie the ropes of professional pink-slipping. But as Ryan faces the possibility that he might soon be grounded himself, the humbled protagonist is finally forced to relate to the victims and to the emotions he used to so easily dismiss.

Gorgeous George, Farmiga and Kendrick give flawless performances, toggling between smug banter and poignancy without schmaltz. Enhancing the piece’s topicality and power, actual laid-off workers were used in the firing scenes.

By doing that, filmmaker Reitman gives his sometimes seductive exploration of hermetic airports and corporate offices the needed messiness of authentic pain. And he’s fashioned the “Air” apparent as Oscar season looms.