In Good Company

[Finn]

ditto

[MacGuffin]

Universal's recent In Good Company will street on 5/10 (SRP $29.98 ) in anamorphic widescreen video with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. Extras will include audio commentary with director Paul Weitz and actor Topher Grace, deleted scenes with optional Weitz commentary, a number of featurettes (including Stars, Youth, Getting Older, Real Life, New York Locations, Editing and Story), cast and crew bios and more.

[soixante]

Just watched In Good Company.  It is this generation's The Apartment.  The main problem with today's ruthless corporate environment is that human beings are reduced to things, or more precisely, they are reduced to figures on an Excel spread sheet.  The best way to cut costs is to simply remove human beings from the equation.  There is one image in the film that speaks volumes -- a bunch of empty chairs accumulate during a nasty round of downsizing.

The acting was excellent.  Quaid is getting better with age, and Topher Grace gracefully reveals (and sometimes conceals) all of the subtle emotional and intellectual changes his character is going through.  Scarlett Johansson reminds me of Meryl Streep in her Deer Hunter/Kramer vs. Kramer days -- why hasn't she been nominated for an Oscar yet?

[w/o horse]

I was just thinking today that In Good Company is a movie that Billy Wilder would have made if he was making movies today and didn't have any talent.

1) It had no original thought. This argument is tough to pull off because the crafty film viewer says, "Judge the movie based on what it was, regardless of what has come before it" or "there is no original thought."

2) The movie had about as much balls as Crash.  The business world is wicked, okay. For sure. I'm 100% with you. Its major concern is profiteering: hello 1950. It whole heartedly attacked an issue that should already be inside of all of us.

3) The love story was so fucking hip. It was open ended, anti-climatic, and "realistic." All of that is bullshit. It is a way to put a love story into a movie that does not need a love story. It justified the love story.

4) The movie went nowhere so fast that at the end of the movie I thought perhaps it was still in the expository stages. It was not. The movie ended before anything happened as far as I am concered. And I love movies without plot.  I love non-decrypt storylines. I fucking love them.  This one just doesn't pull it off.  It's okay to say "the movie was realistic but not good."  Honestly it is.

5) From imdb: "The studio wanted someone from the cast of "That '70s Show" (1998) for the role of Carter and had originally given it to Ashton Kutcher. Kutcher dropped out due to creative differences, and Topher Grace auditioned and got the part." I think Topher Grace is a terrific actor. I think he steals the show in Traffic, personally. I dig his work in That 70's Show. But here was cast because of his popularity, not because he fit the part. And, honestly, all together: did not fit the part. At all.

6) The intention of the movie was to make you think, but all it made me think about was how this movie was a lot like watching a vase fall and shatter on the floor.

I guess that's six different ways of saying it was trite and didn't take me anyplace I haven't already been before.  Comparing it to The Apartment is audacious, The Apartment toyed with taboo subjects like sex and suicide, it was also humerous and cynical about the workplace forty fucking years ago, but most of all it had a great story.  In Good Story didn't have a story, and like subtitles, that confuses some people and makes them think they just witnessed art.

[soixante]

I beg to differ with your contention that nothing happened in In Good Company -- indeed, in the first act of the film, Quaid discovers that his wife is pregnant, he has been demoted, his daughter wants to transfer to NYU, and he takes out a second mortgage on his home.  Later, he finds out that his boss is sleeping with his daughter.  These occurrences would shake up anyone's life.  The stakes couldn't be any higher for Quaid -- which is the sign of a good story.

How can you say "nothing happened" when Topher Grace's character underwent such a radical change -- both internally and externally?  We see him jogging on a beach at the end, as he is no longer a corporate cog.

I wouldn't claim In Good Company is as good as The Apartment, but it is the best this generation can do in the same ballpark.

The message may be old, but it deserves to retold -- there are more important things in life than climbing the corporate ladder.  The business world hasn't changed since The Apartment, so it deserves to have a similar movie to come along and raise the same issues.

It is true that In Good Company isn't the most original film, but how often are films original?  Why make any Westerns after Stagecoach, Shane and The Searchers?  Aren't all Westerns derivative of those three?