In Good Company Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)December 28th, 2004
IN GOOD COMPANY
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Universal Pictures
Grade: B
Directed by: Paul Weitz
Written by: Paul Weitz
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, Scarlett
Johansson
Screened at: Universal, NYC, 12/8/04
If movies are supposed to reflect life albeit through a fine distiller, it's a wonder how few pics are made about how we work. After all, if you have a 40-hour work week with two weeks off and thirteen holidays free during each year, you're putting in 1,736 hours per annum. Is work–which is supposed to fulfill us–so dull that filmmakers shun stories about the office? ‘Twould be a pity for you to miss one of the great comedies this year, Alain Comeu's "Fear and Trembling" about a young European woman (played by Silvie Testud) who is interning with a Japanese company in Tokyo, and who, try as she may, is dumped upon day after day because she's just not one of them. In one of the best comedies of the decade, Mike Judge's "Office Space," a very funny Ron Livingston plays a computer programmer who hates his job, expresses his disgust with the company to an officer sent by headquarters to chop heads, and ironically is promoted for his honesty.
As office satires go, Paul Weitz's "In Good Company," the title serving as ironic counterpoint in both describing the corporation and letting us eavesdrop on social relations, is directed in a conventional manner, presumably suitable for TV as well as the cinema. Young Topher Grace evokes both laughter and sympathy as a 26-year-old, Carter Duryea, who is sent by a major mogul to increase ad volume in the big guy's sports magazine but finds himself the superior officer to a man twice his age, Dan Foreman (Dennis Quaid). The sad point made by the film is that while corporate reorganization may increase the holy bottom line, restructuring causes havoc with human beings who may have worked for the same company for five, ten, twenty years or more and are now sent to pasture. Not only that: those in the upper reaches of management, like Dan–a hotshot exec who must sell ad space in the magazine to survive–are getting substantially more pay than the youths working in the office. Their heads are the first to roll, a truism that keep Dan plugging away despite his demotion since he has major bills to pay, what with his 18-year-old daughter, Alex (Scarlett Johansson) starting college at NYU and a new baby on the way.
If you're a regular moviegoer, you'll recall the most recent time you saw Topher Grace–as the young, laid-back applicant to Columbia University who, after being seduced by the director of admissions (played by Laura Linney) shortly after their interview, phoned his mom to say, "I think it went pretty well." If he is the straight man in "P.S.," he's the comic center in Paul Weitz's movie as a guy who despite his success in office politics is a mess at home. His wife has just left him after seven months of marriage, and a lonely Carter Duryea virtually invites himself to a Sunday dinner at the home of his subordinate, Dan Foreman, where he meets and ultimately beds Dan's college-freshman daughter to the dismay of her dad.
Weitz makes good use of the supporting players, who include David Paymer as the newly fired Morty and Philip Baker Hall as Eugene Kalb, the man who can save Dan's job by investing big ad money in the magazine. Remi Adefarasin is responsible for the nice New York photography, his camera virtually making love to the alluring and seductive Scarlett Johansson.
Rated PG-13. 110 minutes. © 2004 by Harvey Karten
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