“Would you like the cancer?”
“What?”
“Would you like the can, sir?”

There were so many things that I enjoyed about this film.  The cast was amazing, particularly Anna Kendrick as Natalie Keener.  She was brilliant in the largely ignored Rocket Science – which if you haven’t seen it, go hunt it down right now – and it’s awesome seeing her in such a big film.  I wish we’d seen even more of Ryan’s older sister Kara, played by Amy Morton who was breathtaking on stage in Tracy Lett’s August: Osage County.  And I loved how everything looked and felt like airports and hotels but the most pristine, comfortable, beautifully designed airports and hotels you’ve ever seen.

Beyond the cast and the cinematography, there’s the story, and though I loved many of the scenes, most of dialogue, and certain twists in the narrative, I don’t know that I liked the story.  I had trouble putting my finger on it until I stumbled upon this article on /Film.

In the book, which I haven’t read, there’s a third act twist.  Ryan Bingham has a terminal disease, and it casts everything you’ve read in a different light.  Jason Reitman decided he didn’t want that to be a part of the movie.  He wanted it to be about Ryan’s decision about where he was going next in life.  So in the end, we’re left with him staring at the destinations board, and the big grand gesture is that he lets go of his carry-on suitcase.

I love small movies and small stories, but this final moment felt like a cop out.  The entire movie was about Ryan making decisions about where to go next.  Every single scene, he was making that decision over and over again.  Then the final scene, it’s the same decision?  Only everything in his life is worse than it was when we started?  The miles mean nothing, and he’s even more alone.  This type of circular storytelling works when the message is that life never changes, it only gets worse, but this didn’t feel like that kind of movie.

Ryan’s sister’s wedding, the letter of recommendation he writes for Natalie, and the montage at the end of the film all indicated that meaning was found in other people, in the relationships Ryan so desperately avoided.

I would have preferred if he had been dying of cancer.  The film could have ended the same way, but in retrospect, Ryan’s reasons for changing could have been about more than wanting to be “grounded” with Alex (Vera Farmiga). Right now, his reason for wanting to change is a relationship with a woman like him, who unfortunately turns out to be completely unlike him in all the ways that matter.  And making the sole reason for his turn around about Alex is almost as cheap as having the movie end with them miraculously together.  But if he’s scrambling to make his life mean something before he dies, and it’s subtle, then when he lets go of his carry-on suitcase it’s about more than an empty apartment, a broken heart, and ten million miles.

The ending didn’t necessarily ruin the film for me, and ambiguous endings can be very powerful.  But compared to the rest of the movie, this one wasn’t.