January 13-19, 2005

movies

Synergize This

meet the new boss: Topher Grace introduces himself.

In Good Company would be more likeable if its characters weren't.

In Good Company

by Sam Adams

Last seen adapting Nick Hornby, self-appointed chronicler of boys who can't grow up, Paul Weitz returns with a two-pronged take on male maturity, wobbling between youthful kick-ass exuberance and the desire for a stable family life. The tension is neatly, too neatly, expressed by In Good Company's split allegiances. On the one hand, there's Dan Foreman (Dennis Quaid), director of ad sales for a sports magazine, a job description that marks him as an old-fashioned straight-shooter; his most high-pressure tactic is to leave a prospective client with a copy of the magazine, confident that the product sells itself. On the other, there's Carter Duryea (Topher Grace), hotshot shit-talker, a rising young marketing exec whose most recent brainstorm involves selling dino-shaped cell phones to 5-year-olds.

Carter is the perfect foot soldier for the new corporate order, which is why when a global megaconglomerate buys out Dan's magazine, Carter becomes Dan's new boss. In short order, Carter remakes the office in his own image: Clients are taken to rap concerts, not Knicks games; business lunches are had over sushi (which Dan improbably fumbles with); and the magazine, instead of selling itself, becomes "a portal to a synergized world of cross-promotion."

The stage would seem set for a cross-generational satire, except for one thing. Weitz wants us to like Carter, or at least feel for him. Merely casting the fresh-faced Grace would seem to accomplish that goal (although it's easy to see Carter as an extension of Grace's prep-school drug dealer in Traffic), but Weitz keeps driving home the point — Carter is a pawn in a corporate game, and what's more, he's unhappy at home, envious of Dan's "perfect" marriage (as compared to his own burgeoning divorce). Dan, meanwhile, has his own problems, not least his sense of aging inadequacy and the fact that his daughter looks a lot like Scarlett Johansson, which might cause any father a few sleepless nights.

Given that the 39-year-old Weitz, as he noted in Sunday's Inquirer interview, is midway between Carter's 26 and Dan's not-quite-52, the movie's vacillation isn't surprising; nor, given that Weitz isn't getting any younger, is the fact that Carter eventually has a lot more to learn from Dan than the other way around. But Weitz's inability to let us dislike either, even for a second, undercuts the movie's dialectic structure. By showing us from the beginning that Dan and Carter are more alike than they realize, Weitz negates his own movie. There's nothing to do but sit around until they figure out what we already know. There's no question that the movie's heart is in the right place, but just about nothing else is. Artistically speaking, Weitz is straining for a maturity he hasn't earned, and the result is a middling Jerry Maguire retread redeemed only by the chance to see Grace strut his increasingly impressive stuff.

In Good Company Written and directed by Paul Weitz A Universal release Opens Friday at area theaters