In Good Company

6 June 2013

In Good Company 2004

• Director: Paul Weitz
• Based on book: No
• Cast: Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, Scarlett Johansson, Marg Helgenberger, David Paymer, Philip Baker Hall
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Dennis Quaid  – Smart People, American Dreamz, Caveman, Far from Heaven, Great Balls of Fire, Day After Tomorrow
• Topher Grace – Mona Lisa Smile
• Scarlett Johansson – He’s Just Not that into You, The Island, Love Song for Bobby Long, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Lost in Translation, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Manny & Lo
• Marg Helgenberger – Erin Brockovich
• David Paymer – State and Main, Amistad, Get Shorty, Quiz Show, Cagney and Lacey
• Philip Baker Hall – The Zodiac, Bruce Almighty, Dogville, Cradle Will Rock
• Why bought: cheap. 3 * in Maltin. Scarlett Johansson
• Seen: April 19, 2013

  

What an awful job.  What a stupid system. How can we get rid of it, corporate globalism? Profits above all. People are expendable.

This film is a comedy. It’s very funny.  It’s also a tragedy. More than the film makers themselves realize.  The happy ending in which the old guys who had gotten fired by the young hotshot get their jobs back because an even more enormous global corporation buys the one recently bought by…(you get the picture)…is tragic because these old guys are happy to be back in the system that got rid of them, and they think they’ve won.

I would really really hate working in that world.  But people do – lots of people – and it’s the world that runs the rest of us. How depressing.

But it’s a lovely film. Topher Grace is a vulnerable, endearing, bumbling, caffeine/endorphin-addicted twenty-six-year-old hot shot corporate rising start who fires the fifty-somethings left and right with hardly a second thought and he is simply terrific. He should have got an Oscar. Scarlett Johansson is always good and I just realized in this film what an incredibly rich voice she has.

Best scene: Topher Grace, having just been promoted big time in the corporate jungle, buys an electric blue Porsche, drives it out of the car lot and gets run into by another car. I laughed out loud at that one. I am not a car lover.

Good film. Good Friday evening fare.  Maltin was about right.

  

3* of 5

Update December 2025 - I like Johansson. I don't like Quaid. I really don't like corporate America, especially advertising. 3*???? What was I thinking??? Must have been the Friday evening whisky talking.

2* av 5