HEART AND DOUGH

IN GOOD COMPANY
Written and directed by Paul Weitz; cinematography by Remi Adefarasin; editing by Myron I Kerstein; original music by Stephen Trask; production design by William Arnold; art direction by Sue Chan; set decoration by David Smith; costume design by Molly Maginnis
With: Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, Scarlett Johansson, Marg Helgenberger, Zena Grey, David Paymer, Clark Gregg, Philip Baker Hall, Selma Blair, and Malcolm McDowell. Rated PG-13 for some sexual content and drug references. Running time: 109 Minutes



Reviewed by Joel Johnson

In Good Company, Paul Weitz’s first solo directing effort (he has codirected three films with his brother Chris), is another engaging film that has a bit more heart than the film would seem to warrant. This was true for Weitz’s first film, the crude teen-sex comedy American Pie, and it is certainly true for this drama about fathers, sons, daughters, and business associates. The two central characters are Dennis Quaid, a middle-aged sports magazine advertising director with a wife and two daughters, and Topher Grace, the young eager-beaver business executive who takes Quaid’s job. Just because Scarlett Johansson and a romance are prominently featured in the film’s promotional campaign, don’t be fooled into thinking the film is primarily a love story. Actually, it is—just not a romantic love story. It is an affirmation of the love within families and the love within familylike relationships. More specifically, the film affirms a relationship that doesn’t often take center stage—that of mentor-student and its similarities to a father-son relationship.

Of course, that relationship is turned on its head in the first twenty minutes or so before Dan Foreman (Quaid) and Carter Duryea (Grace) even meet. Carter’s company buys the sports magazine where Dan works and puts Carter in charge of the advertising department that Dan had headed. The relationship between Grace and Quaid is exceptionally well written, capturing the younger man’s uncertainty about his own leadership and the older man’s unease with losing his authority. This scenario, of course, is a set-up that could produce bitter enemies. However, with the help of Weitz’s script, the two actors establish a relationship that transcends the misalignment of their places in the corporate hierarchy. Despite the endemic conflict within their work relationship as well as their potentially conflicting suitor and protector roles toward Dan’s teenaged daughter Alex (Johansson), they like one another. And critical to the film’s success is that audiences like them both, too. This should be, for most audience members, mighty close to a sure thing.

For many filmgoers, a film about the relationship—unique or not—between two very likable characters may be enough. However, it should be noted that the film does have some gaping holes that the actors’ charm may not succeed in papering over.

Carter arrives in the boarding party of the Globecom corporate raiders. He is the protégé of Mark Steckle (Clark Gregg), who is himself an evangelical go-getter for the mystical Globecom CEO Teddy K (an uncredited Malcolm McDowell). We soon learn that Steckle is totally ruthless. While this comes as no major surprise to the audience, Carter is shocked. It seems somewhat disingenuous for Carter to have worked with Steckle, to have lobbied so that he could continue to work with Steckle in Globecom’s new business venture, and yet hold attitudes much closer to Dan’s than to Steckle’s.

The glib handling of Carter’s romantic life also stretches credibility. Carter has been shockingly inept in his first choice for a lifetime partner—Kimberly (Selma Blair). This couple seems not only ill-suited to be married, but so ill-suited to coexist with one another that it seems amazing that they ever dated each other. It is, of course, not incredible that Carter and Alex become attracted romantically, but that the teenaged girl would be the bold sexual aggressor toward the fully adult male is difficult to swallow. While this frees Carter from being easily labeled a cad seducing young girls, it is quite out of character for the virginal Alex, for whom boys seem to be a low priority.

The film shines a light on bad behavior in the major leagues of corporate business. The lives of the men and women who work for these companies or in businesses that suddenly draw the attention of these companies are thrown into chaos. Sometimes the decision-making that causes this chaos is capricious, selfish, shortsighted, and needlessly cruel. This side of business is not the subject of very many films, but this is not an exposé like the recent documentary The Corporation that builds a scathing indictment of multinational corporations as meeting the clinical definition of psychopath. It is refreshing to see a film say something about this alarming side of big business, but the resolution of the film’s corporate moral morass is decidedly simplistic, unoriginal, and definitely not satisfying. Deep pockets equal might, and might makes right.

The film does get a number of other things right. It presents an attractive and eminently likable cast in a functional, but not perfect, family and shows how workgroups develop the same sense of caring for each other that families do. It shows that the transition from youth to mature adult is difficult and that mentors lending helping hands are essential. It also shows that there is a time to search one’s own core being for one’s own destiny. While some may disagree, the resolution of the film’s romance is dead-on. In Good Company entertains, amuses, and gently makes the audience think about the world around them. That’s really quite a bit for a film. It probably is quite easy for most filmgoers to gloss over its flaws. But they are there, and we critics have to find them. 

 

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