In Good Company DVD Review (Dennis Quaid) Empire Movies

IN GOOD COMPANY DVD REVIEW

In Good Company
(Universal Studios Home Entertainment)

The Movie

The Extras

Reviewed by

6.5/10

Liam

In Good Company is another example of a movie that I really expected more from. From the time I first saw this movie's threatrical trailer, I was sold. I wanted to see this movie. It seemed real - genuine. And in the end, I think that's what really turned me off of the movie. It was almost too real - to a fault. There's was nothing really special about it that made it stand out.

In the movie, Dennis Quaid stars as Dan Foreman, an average everyday guy with a job in ad sales for one of America's best-selling sports magazines. When the magazine is sold in a corporate takeover, he's downgraded from a management position to "wingman" to the new up-and-coming boss, Carter Duryea (Topher Grace). Carter seems to have it all. He's "being groomed" for bigger things at his job. And his wife looks strikingly like Selma Blair. But, when his wife dumps him for his workaholic ways, everything begins to fall apart. So, he attaches himself to Dan - and to Dan's daughter, played by the lovely Scarlett Johansson. What follows is a look at the differences between the business world of yesterday versus the corporate world of today and how it applies to and changes these two very different characters.

Special features on this DVD include a series of brief featurettes titled "Synergy" - which was the film's original title. They include "Stars" which looks for the most part at Quaid's character, "Youth" which looks at the Topher Grace and Scarlett Johansson characters, "Getting Older" focusing again on the Quaid character, "Real Life" which looks at the parallels between (again) the Quaid character and Peter Spina - the real-life editor of Sporting News Magazine, "New York Locations" which follows the director around the locations, "Editing", which is pretty self-explanatory and finally "Story" where we talk about the film's script.

These are followed a series of 10 deleted scenes with optional commentary by director Paul Weitz pretty much all of which work as individual scenes but were understandably cut from the final picture.

Finally, we get an audio commentary by Weitz and Topher Grace. Although for the most part Weitz dominates the conversation, we still get a nice insight into the movie, the story and the characters.

Looking back, I think part of what turned me off about this movie is that I couldn't relate to the characters. And in a character-driven story like this, that's key. You've got the old-time business exec with a family (not me), the young hot shot business grad (again, not me) and the hot daughter of the older guy (definitely not me). Maybe one day, when my own kids are grown up and some flashy young know-it-all tries to date my daughter and take my job, I'll appreciate this movie more. But for now, I'll just call it a reasonably half-decent but by no means spectacular way to spend a couple of hours.

Features
Commentary with Topher Grace and director Paul Weitz, Deleted Scenes, Featurettes

Video
Widescreen (1.85:1)

Audio
English Dolby Digital 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1

Subtitles
French, Spanish, English Closed-Captioned

Release Date
May 10, 2005

Rating
PG-13

Length
110 mins.

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