just because the character is a deluded narcissist bordering on vapid doesn't make the film empty.

This film was about a hundred times realer than 'Juno' without having a hot-button 'issue' to address like teen pregnancy.

It's what 'Margot At The Wedding' might have been if it hadn't drown in its own self-seriousness & Kidman had delivered the more subtle, nuanced approach to neuroses that Theron does here.

'Beautiful Girls' without its more cringe-worthy cheesiest aspects.

I liked 'Up In The Air' just fine but Clooney basically does a longer, less funny, less entertaining meditation on these centuries-old 'man without a country'/disconnected/self-deluded/alone-approaching-middle-age tropes with "The Air Up There" that earns him a rack of Oscars while this movie doesn't garner a single nomination.

That could be my sliding Clooney-scale for critics giving any film he's in at least half a letter-grade higher than it would have deserved if it had been the same quality movie with say, Dennis Quaid.

It could be because that the male-dominated film critique community has trouble evaluating female-centered roles that don't have a dramatic hook to hang your hat on like Theron-in-ugly-make-up, Swank-pretending-to-have-a-dick-or-being-women's-boxing-version-of-Terry-Schiavo, Halle whipping her titties out in grief, Portman finger-fucking-herself-into-psychodramatic-frenzy, etc.

Maybe a combination of the two.

I don't know where the lack of story comes from, it's absolutely true to the one its telling from start to finish and its themes certainly aren't frivolous despite it not needing to hammer them home to the audience.

Everything works from the final adolescent-story-volume she's crafting while on a desperate trip to re-imagine her own, the use of music (having the same Teenage Fanclub song played three or four different times & having it mean something different each time), the mixed bag of envy/contempt/pity that at times exists on both sides of the small-town/small-town-but-moved-to-the-big-town fence, Oswalt being victimized but less pitiable and far more capable of self-love than the homecoming-queen he always wanted to fuck, her telling exchanges/subtle-wars with hotel-clerks/retail people, the Mini-Apple, etc.