In Good Company (2005) * * *

 

Directed by:  Paul Weitz

Starring:  Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, Scarlett Johannson, David Paymer, Philip Baker Hall, Marg Helgenberger, Malcolm McDowell, Clark Gregg

Carter Duryea (Grace) is promoted way over his head in In Good Company, in which he is installed as the head of sales and marketing for a sports magazine after a corporate takeover.   He replaces Dan Foreman (Quaid), a fiftyish family man who has led the department for years but is now playing "wingman" to Carter.   Since Carter doesn't know much about the magazine, but does know about marketing, or at least the metrics part of it, he allows Dan to be his guide and forges a tenuous friendship along the way.   A friendship, mind you, that will snap when Dan finds out Carter is also dating his college-age daughter Alex (Johannson).   

Carter, recently divorced and lonely, is career-obsessed because he doesn't have much else to be obsessed about.   Dan's wife Ann (Helgenberger) is also pregnant, a shock to Dan because he figured he was long past the age where he would have to change diapers again.   Alex is in college and with a baby on the way, Dan can't afford to lose his job, which includes having to mercilessly and coldly cut staff that has worked with him in simpatico for years.   One such cost-cutting victim is Morty (Paymer), who finds he is too old to start over and not cut out for anything else but sales.   In Good Company understands that the Carters of today will be the Mortys of tomorrow.   One day, Carter will wake up and he'll be fifty (to quote Good Will Hunting). 

Carter's boss is the smarmier Steckle (Gregg), an in-your-face boss who only thinks of the bottom line and kissing the ass of the conglomerate owner Teddy K (McDowell), who holds a company pow-wow to espouse on the virtues of synergy, in which some of his other companies could advertise in the magazine.   "Isn't that cheating?" asks Dan, who has the balls to call out Teddy K on his bullshit which enthralls his other underlings.   The result of his meeting is unlikely in any corporate world, but hey it's cool to dream of this outcome.  

Quaid and Grace play likable, universal men at the opposite ends of the corporate spectrum.   Carter eyes advancement while Dan is content with his position and only wants to keep it amid turmoil. Johannson (pre-Avengers) plays a college student who is perceptive well beyond her years and doesn't necessarily roll over and play dead for her boyfriend or her father.   What makes In Good Company charming and not a sitcom is its keen view of corporate America which in the past seventeen years really hasn't changed all that much.