The last month has been pretty rough, thanks for asking. I spent some time in SF trying to help my son, who is grown or says he is, and when I wasn’t looking at apartments and talking to other concerned parties I caught up on my movies.

My wife hadn’t wanted to see Up in the Air, in part because she has had to lay a few people off recently and was looking for something more like escape at the cinema, so I went alone and found myself wondering: what the hell? I mean, if I had seen the flick with no expectations or advance hype I might have reacted differently. But the National Board of Review named it picture of the year. Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner won a Golden Globe for best screenplay. It’s on the short list for a best-picture Oscar. Are we talking about the same movie?

For the dozens of you who haven’t seen the movie, I will try to avoid spoiling any plot points. Though honestly, if you can’t see the twists of this flick coming, you haven’t been to the movies in the last 2o years. No, it doesn’t have the phony, staged-home feel of Nancy Meyers’ It’s Complicated, or mushy new age undertow of Avatar. But if you have seen any romantic comedy in which the hero (or sometimes heroine) has a sudden, and rather out-of-character, change of heart  — going from selfish prick to St. Francis of Assisi in the last act — you’ve seen this movie.

Much has been made of Reitman (who also directed) and his decision to use recently laid off people to play the folks who George Clooney’s character sacks for a living. And yes, that’s a nice touch, if a little gratuitous (“Hungry freaks, daddy!”). Maybe that’s why so many critics fell so hard for this rather predictably redemptive rom-com: because they’re all worried about their jobs and thinking that could be them up there on the silver screen! After all, my old colleague Glenn Kenny got a role in Steven Soderbergh’s Girlfriend Experience. Everyone needs a Plan B.