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| In Good Company
Directed By: Paul Weitz Plot
Summary - Review 1 - Review
2 - CURRENT REVIEWS
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| Dan Foreman is headed for a shakeup. He is demoted from head of ad sales for a major magazine when the company he works for is acquired in a corporate takeover. His new boss, Carter Duryea, is half his age--a business school prodigy who preaches corporate synergy. While Dan develops clients through handshake deals and relationships, Carter cross-promotes the magazine with the cell phone division and Krispity Krunch, an indeterminate snack food under the same corporate umbrella. Both men are going through turmoil at home. Dan has two daughters, Alex, age 18, and Jana, age 16, and is shocked when his wife tells him she's pregnant with a new child. Carter, in the meanwhile, is dumped by his wife of seven months just as he gets his promotion. Dan and Carter's uneasy friendship is thrown into jeopardy when Carter falls for, and begins an affair with, Dan's daughter Alex. [TRAILER] Director Paul Weitz, who co-directed “American Pie” and “About A Boy” with his brother Chris, is a unique talent in modern Hollywood. At a time when films are becoming increasingly divided between pop fodder and artsy pretentiousness, these two make crowd-pleasers with a swelling undercurrent of intelligence, complexity and heart. As such, their work typically divides critics. There are those who want the challenging masterpieces, who would scoff if I dared to say that “American Pie” was a rather hilarious exploration of immaturity, teen angst and male bonding, and that “About A Boy” was not only an engaging movie about friendship and romance, but was one of the best films of 2002. And then there are the rest of us, who enjoy interesting stories about interesting characters, growing and changing as the movie unfolds. It is in this vein that I strongly recommend “In Good Company,” a movie about a potpourri of interesting issues, but told simply and humbly in a form that is endlessly endearing. “Company” could really be described as three stories. The first concerns a world of growing corporate conglomerates, as one behemoth buys another, and ad salesman Dan Foreman (Dennis Quaid) suddenly finds himself demoted at the nation’s leading sports magazine. He now reports to Carter Duryea (Topher Grace), a young hot-shot who thinks he knows the score. The second story is how they quickly come to hate each other, work together, and eventually discover that they also respect each other. The third story is the most contrived, yet most essential of the film. Visiting Dan’s home one night for dinner, Carter starts talking with Alex (Scarlett Johansson), Dan’s oldest daughter and a freshman in college. Their talking leads to dates which leads to sleepovers and, as one can easily expect, when Dan finds out, the walls come tumbling down. Weitz’s films sound silly and trivial, but they really are delicious and unpredictable. Scenes can start light and fluffy, but suddenly characters open their mouths and say something interesting, and even profound. In “Company,” Carter’s confidence is only skin deep, his firing and restructuring of Dan’s old team weighs heavily on both their minds, and when Dan finally confronts his daughter about her relationship in a terse, four-sentence standoff, it is affecting because we have invested in these characters and really listen to what they say. All of Weitz’s films put characters in uncomfortable situations, and then watch as they react, adjust and discover their inner strengths and failings. Buoyed by strong performances from the aged and bitter Quaid, the cocky but insecure Grace and the confused Johansson, “In Good Company” is really a movie about characters forced to confront themselves for the first time. In the best possible sense, Weitz’s works are journeys of self-discovery, for people on both sides of the screen. How many other mainstream filmmakers today could make a movie that simply celebrates characters coming to understand themselves?
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