Just perfect...

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Marjorie Reyolds has one pleasing song ("By The Look Of Things"), and Mantan Moreland has one delightful scene where he dances - surprisingly well! Other than that, "Up In The Air" comes straight off the mystery-comedy assembly line (the cut-rate production department). The lead, Frankie Darro, is a non-entity, and at the end the killer seems to be chosen at random (no clues are given to the viewer). ** out of 4.

B-movie star Frankie Darro and everyone's favorite bug-eyed comic relief Mantan Moreland made several murder mystery comedies together around 1940 (with some other more-or-less recurring cast members, including Tristram Coffin) for Monogram Pictures. In this one, the guys work at a radio station (Frankie as a bell-boy as usual) when they get mixed up in the murder of the station's popular, but problematic singing star, Rita Wilson (played by Lorna Gray) who is shot during a rehearsal. As usual, the police detective who handles the case is quite arrogant and incompetent, but he ends up working together quite fine with Frankie. And Mantan. Who, while doing his regular scared-of-everything act, is definitely much more than a mandatory comic relief here: he gets top billing, proves again that he is an excellent comedian and also takes part in the detective work quite effectively and in general, his role is more similar to what we usually see from Lou Abbott. So even the people who are extra-sensitive about the racial stereotypes of classic Hollywood are safe with this one. And talking about Abbott and Costello: they actually did their own version of the "murder mystery at the radio station" theme two years later in Who Done It? (1942), while Monogram remade the story in 1945 as There Goes Kelly.Up In The Air has a little bit of everything: mystery, action, comedy, musical and the mixture works pretty well, but as the hour-long entry has several musical numbers, comedy acts and even a dance performance by Mantan, you can imagine how thin the plot is. But it is actually nothing more than a tool to keep the story going and to hold the movie together and at that, it does a pretty fine job and makes this a rather enjoyable little time-passer, complete with car chase, Frankie and Mantan's black face comedy act and a mysterious singing cowboy.

Frankie Darro did pretty well for a child actor. Starting off in the silents, he appeared in "The Public Enemy" (1931) and was the star of William Wellman's heart wrenching tale of the depression "The Wild Boys of the Road" (1933). By the mid 30s he had his own series at Conn Pictures Corp and by the late 30s he was teamed with Mantan Moreland for a Monogram series of comedy mysteries with plenty of music and up and coming female talent. He was once co-starred with Gale Storm in "Let's Go Collegiate" (1941) but usually it was with the very pretty Marjorie Reynolds.Frankie (Frankie Darro) is a page at the local radio station. He has an eye for the ladies and he spies pretty receptionist Ann (Marjorie Reynolds) who yearns to be a singer. He "arranges" an audition and finds she really has a voice - she sings "By the Look of Things" and really swings it. By the song's end she realises that Frankie is not a big wig but a lowly page. Meanwhile the station's top singer Rita (Lorna Grey) throws one tantrum too many and the station is on the look out for a new talent. Not before Rita begins a sultry rendition of "Doin' the Conga" - suddenly the lights go out, a shot rings out and when the lights go on - Rita is found dead!!!Mantan Moreland is always great and here he is Jeff, Frankie's amiable sidekick. He does a soft shoe shuffle to "By the Look of Things" only to be told that it won't go down on radio!!! The suspects mount - a suspicious cowboy, Tex (Gordon Jones), drops into the broadcast - Rita seems scared of him - he disappears in all the commotion. Frankie has overheard Farrell (Tristram Coffin) having words with Rita before the broadcast - he says he will help Ann with her career if Frankie doesn't mention the fight to the police. Frankie (in blackface) and Jeff audition for the comedy spot on the radio, when they decide to show Hastings (Dick Elliot) the manager, they find Tex Barton dead!!!Ann gets another chance and really puts over "Somehow or Other" - "mmmm not bad" - a radio technician sums her up. Frankie thinks he has solved the mystery. He thinks Gladys Wharton, a girl that Tex was previously involved with, is really Ann, because he found Ann's picture in Tex's belongings. It is pretty plain that Rita is really Gladys. Rita and Tex had a singing act at a Cheyenne radio station but left due to a shooting scandal. Frankie finds this all out by sending a wire - he is just about to find out the executive's name in the scandal when the line goes dead.Who did it???? I didn't guess and I thought it was one of Darro's and Moreland's better pairings - even though Frankie didn't do any stunts!!! Darro and Moreland had an easy rapport and a great friendship that really comes through the film. The film ends with Marjoie Reynolds singing "Doin' The Conga" and really giving it her all.Recommended.

Up in the Air, a quickie 1940 B movie cranked out on a tight budget and on an even tighter shooting schedule, is worth viewing at least once. It's representative of all those cheap bread-and-butter movies the studios churned out designed to fill the lower bill of America's movie houses. If you don't have some familiarity with these films you just won't understand what a lot of Hollywood was about before and, to a degree, right after WWII. For every Clark Gable, Rita Hayworth and John Ford, there were thousands of journeymen, men and women, directing, writing, acting in and making possible all these movies. The movie, only 61 minutes long, is a comedy murder mystery which was a popular staple back then. This time the formula also calls for songs. There are three original ones and, like the movie, they're not bad. It stars a long forgotten actor named Frankie Darrow, who was big stuff in the B movie business back in the mid-Thirties through the mid-Forties. Darrow was a small, lean guy who got his start as a child actor. His big years were spent playing jockeys and high school students. At 5' 3" and when tastes changed right after WWII, Darrow was quickly left behind after he returned from the Navy. By 1950, when he was 33, he was only getting bit parts. He and a partner finally bought a bar in Hollywood, a bad move. Darrow became a serious alcoholic, but at least a relatively good-natured one. Except for occasional movie and television bits, he was washed up. If you admire Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet, Darrow was one of two men hired to take turns being inside Robby to make him move. That's show biz, kids. One other interesting thing to note. This is one of seven films Darrow made between 1939 and 1941 in which he always plays a young man named Frankie and always partners with a buddy named Jeff. The two invariably get mixed up in mystery, with Frankie determined to solve the crime and Jeff reluctantly backing him up. The interesting thing is that Jeff in these seven movies always is played by Mantan Moreland. Although Moreland does his trademark eye-popping, it's not as exaggerated as it usually was. There's almost none of the foot- shuffling and chitlin dialect that Hollywood made its black actors use. Except for one, thankfully brief (but funny) comedy routine Darrow and Moreland do as Rastus and Mose with Darrow in blackface (but which Moreland dominates), the Jeff character is, for Hollywood of the period, unusually color blind. With Up in the Air, Darrow plays Frankie Ryan, an energetic and confident young man employed as a page at Amalgamated Broadcasting Company. His ambition is to snag a comedy spot on one of its radio shows. He meets Anne Mason (Marjorie Reynolds), newly hired as a lobby greeter who wants to be a singer. Wouldn't you know it, Rita Wilson, the snooty and well-known singer on one of Amalgamated's top shows, takes a bullet in the heart during a rehearsal. Frankie is determined to find the killer, promote Anne into the singing slot, and at least get a comedy try-out chance with Jeff in front of the producers. Frankie is the kind of inexhaustibly active fellow who always snaps his fingers when he gets an idea, then charges out of the room, or down the hall, or up the stairs, or through a doorway. Eventually, sometimes with the help of the police and sometimes not, Frankie, with Jeff close behind, makes the killer come forth. There are no great surprises. The acting is competent and the movie moves quickly through its 61 minutes. Up in the Air isn't a waste of time exactly, but it helps if you do a little reading about Darrow and Hollywood's B-movie factories. About those three songs. Unlike the movie, they're worth experiencing more than once. "Doin' the Congo," written by Edward Kay, Lew Porter and Johnny Lange, is a very nice Latin rhythm number. "Somehow or Other" and "By the Looks of Things," written by Kay and Harry Tobias, are light swing numbers. "By the Looks of Things," especially, is a song that is much better than it needed to be. Marjorie Reynolds sings all three.