“In Good Company” (Universal Pictures)
Dennis Quaid, like fine wine, just gets better as he gets older. He is at his best in the new movie “In Good Company” where he takes a pretty ordinary script and makes it shine through his pure likeability. He gets solid support from Topher Grace who may grow into another Dennis Quaid as he gets older.
Quaid plays Dan Foreman, a successful sales manager for a sports magazine. He makes good money, likes his co-workers, has a wife he loves, and two attractive daughters. In short, life is almost perfect. Then one day he learns that his wife is pregnant, and that his magazine has been sold. The pregnancy he can learn to like; the new boss he gets is another story.
Carter Duryea (Grace) is the whiz kid who is Dan’s replacement. Dan is demoted and this man/child who is half his age becomes his boss. Still he does get to keep his job and some of the others who have been on his team are not so fortunate.
Insult gets added to injury when he learns that Carter is dating his daughter (Scarlett Johansson. She is a freshman in college and is certainly old enough to date, but Dan does not want her dating his boss.
All of this could be predictable and ordinary but in the hands of director Paul Weitz it is not. Using Quaid and Grace’s acting skills and throwing in a few plot twists here and there he keeps it all fresh and enjoyable. The only clinker is Johansson’s character. She comes off as being shallow and predatory, which is not what I think Weitz intended.
The film is rated PG-13 for profanity and brief nudity.
In this film Quaid plays a character who is actually a little older than Quaid is in real life, and if Quaid had not been available for the role I can see it going to Steve Martin. But then it would have lost the dramatic edge it has and fallen more into the comedic side.
If you like movies about real problems you or I could face. And if you like having your movies inhabited by people you would like as friends, then “In Good Company” is a movie you will totally enjoy. It is the kind of film you can sit down, relax, watch and enjoy. Then when you leave the theater you feel better than you did when you came.
I scored “In Good Company” a companionable 7 out of 10.
