In Good Company

Paul Weitz

BY Cam LindsayPublished Jun 1, 2005

Paul Weitz has done a remarkable job with his career following American Pie, a film that could have easily pigeonholed and reduced the director to gross-outs for the rest of his life. Though Down to Earth was disappointing, he showed great promise adapting Nick Hornby's charming About a Boy and has again proven his worth with In Good Company. Also written by Weitz, the film centres on two sports magazine salesmen trying to survive in the cutthroat world of corporate America. Dennis Quaid is Dan, the seasoned veteran who's twice the age of his new boss, Carter, played by Topher Grace. When Dan is demoted and discovers his wife is pregnant, he then has to cope with Carter dating his oldest daughter, his precious 18-year-old Alex (Scarlett Johansson). In Good Company is impossible not enjoy on some level. While pessimists might sneer at the tidy ending, the film finds both Quaid and Grace at their best, feeding off each other in familial light-heartedness. Both Weitz and Grace are featured on the commentary and certainly have a good time watching the film. The director's self-deprecating humour is endearing (he admits all his ideas come from commercials), while his fondness for including monkeys in each film seems ridiculously fabricated, until he lists every example. The featurette, "Synergy," uses each letter in the word to explore an aspect of the film. The cutting room floor sequence is most enjoyable, visiting the editing room and showing how the team cut an hour from the original two-hour-and-45-minute running time. The deleted scenes are also valuable extras, most notably the hilarious scene where Dan dyes his hair, only to have it drip down his face in a board meeting. Highly recommended. (Universal)


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