In Good Company

In Good Company (Director: Paul Weitz)

Paul Weitz and brother Chris Weitz are best known for American Pie and sort of became a brother-producer team like the Coens. Their next big collaboration was About A Boy, which was a surprisingly mature film after the Pie series. The big miss: Down to Earth, the Chris Rock remake of Heaven Can Wait. It looks like they were credited together for Boy and Earth, but Paul got the credit for Pie, and he gets the entire writing and directing credit here, with Chris producing. In Good Company gets a limited release on December 29 before opening wide on January 14.

In Good Company is sort of a slam on huge, hostile, soulless corporations, out-of-touch with reality and human beings in the quest for large sums of money, usually by way of taking over existing corporations and firing employees, which is sort of the way by which 26-year-old Carter Duryea (Topher Grace from "That 70's Show") takes over an ad sales director position at a popular sports magazine, usurping the position held by 51-year-old Dan Foreman (Dennis Quaid). Carter's company has big changes in store, trying to up the sales to impossible heights while firing solid workers for any reason they can find. Pressure is laid out by Carter's boss (Clark Gregg) to fire Foreman, but Carter sees a chance to learn from the best and have a guide in a business he has no experience in and is scared to death to run.

So, through this relationship Carter meets Alex (Scarlett Johansson....sigh...if you want to read how much I sound like a stalker, read the September 30, 2003 Lost in Translation review after weeding through baseball talk, then read the January 27 review of The Perfect Score, and for good measure, read my February 3 review of Girl With A Pearl Earring), Foreman's daughter. Carter, who has married fairly young (his wife played by Selma Blair) is in a relationship headed for divorce, sees the things he really wants in Foreman's life: house, wife (a still-stunning Marg Helgenberger), kids...and of course, Alex. With work beginning to rear its ugly head in the multiple firings and the loss of sales, and the divorce final, Alex and Carter get into an intense relationship, keeping it secret from Dan.

This, of course, creates conflict, and it sends the movie to decisions about the fate of these characters. Topher Grace pulls out his first winning leading role, after Win A Date With Tad Hamilton was stolen from him by Josh Duhamel earlier this year, and Dennis Quaid is at his very best here. Scarlett Johansson does what is required, but essentially, this is a story about Carter and Dan, their friendship and the problems involved with it.

It's a very good film, but has a couple of problems. First off, Grace, who is a perpetually winning, good-guy type, isn't really the jerk the film wants us to believe he is or was. Clark Gregg's evil boss persona is so evil there isn't any humanity involved, although I imagine that most people believe these types run these corporations, a sort of cartoon sketch of the people behind it all (working as an underling for a corportation myself, it's easy to see these guys in broad strokes). These are flaws that cannot possibly sink the ship, but they do have a false ring to them.

The Weitz brothers have now made a couple of well-thought films about growing up. Even American Pie contained those values. The films have a nice, comfortable quality to them, even though there may be an unsettling moment or two. In Good Company is another very solid effort.