In the Company of Men.

Contrary to his admission in Ocean’s 12, I’m happy to report that Topher Grace did not in fact “phone in that Dennis Quaid movie.” In fact, he, Quaid, and much of the supporting cast make In Good Company a sometimes saccharine but ultimately worthwhile evening at the movies. Like Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Todd Louiso, Grace is great at bringing to life characters that we all know in real life but rarely see onscreen, and his turn here as aspiring but well-meaning corporate shark Carter Duryea is no exception. And Quaid, who’s slowly taken on a rugged, masculine resonance in his middle-aged period — sorta like Harrison Ford 6-8 years ago — is equally good as displaced and disgruntled ad sales exec Dan Foreman (probably one of the most goofily symbolic character names since Tom Hanks’ “Chuck Noland” in Cast Away.)

In fact, that “Foreman” gimmick is probably the main problem with In Good Company. It’s painted in broad strokes, and at times, the scriptwriting wheels grind so loudly in this so-warmhearted-its-dopey flick that it took me right out of the film. Quaid’s Foreman doesn’t just love his job — he loves his job, with an intensity and naivete that’s, if not unbecoming, at least unrealistic in a guy his age. Similarly, Grace’s overcaffeinated, underexperienced Duryea seems to know instinctively he’s trodding the wrong path from the get-go, which kills what little uncertainty we had about where the story is going. The one real bad guy (Clark Gregg) is really bad, Duryea’s self-absorbed trophy wife (Selma Blair) is really self-absorbed (their foyer is a shrine to her image), and so on. (Scarlett Johansson, rounding out the top bill as Quaid’s daughter and Grace’s post-Blair love interest, is at turns girlish and womanly as the script necessitates…and I didn’t find her believable at all. Then again, I’ll admit, Lost in Translation notwithstanding, I’m starting to find Johansson as annoyingly mannered as Jeremy Davies on his bad days.)

To be fair to In Good Company, my taste in corporate satire runs closer to Brazil, Office Space, The Office, Glengarry Glen Ross, and In the Company of Men than it does to films like this one, which I think almost undoubtedly speaks worse of me than it does this movie. As he also showed in the surprisingly moving About a Boy, writer-director Paul Weitz is magnanimous to a fault with his characters — at times, he doesn’t seem to want to think badly of any of them. And, particularly with Grace, Quaid, and role players like David Paymer working their mojo, In Good Company‘s kindness is contagious — Annoyed by the sugary-sweetness of it all at first, I found myself slowly and inexorably won over by the movie in the middle hour. By the time Quaid speaks truth to power (in the form of Malcolm McDowell’s Murdoch-like Teddy K) in the final act, I knew the movie was selling me a seriously implausible view of just desserts and the corporate life. But, ultimately, I didn’t mind so much.
Just as the film condemns globalization and “synergy” while throwing in more gratuitous product placements per minute than I’ve seen in some time, In Good Company nevertheless eventually won me over with its generosity of spirit. As Barnum said, there’s a sucker born every minute, and by the end, I was another satisfied customer.

Mission Compromised.

When writing about Touchstone’s new version of The Alamo, I find myself in a very similar situation as I was post-Hellboy. Part of me really wants to say nice things about this movie. The occasional film flourishes aside (such as Davy Crockett’s last stand), I think The Alamo for the most part tries to get the history right…Dennis Quaid’s Sam Houston is more a whiskey-doused speculator than American hero, Crockett is something of a congressman on the make, and there’s at least a nod to such ugly realities as American slavery and the land-grab nature of the whole Texian enterprise. Moreover, the Mexican view of the battle is also more fleshed out than we’ve come to expect in Alamo movies, even if Santa Anna is played like a straight-up Bond villain. Heck, compared to Gods & Generals, it’s like this movie was written by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky.

But, frankly, The Alamo turns out to be kinda dull through most of the middle hour. The set-up is well-done, the payoff is well-done (notwithstanding the twenty minute foray into the Battle of San Jacinto, which reminded me of the Doolittle Raid in Michael Bay’s lousy Pearl Harbor), but the twelve days of siege that comprise much of the movie is ultimately a bore. “Well, Col. Bowie, we’re all going to die.” “Yes sir, Lt. Col. Travis, that’s correct, we’re dead ducks. What do you think, Davy?” “I’m with you fellers. Mincemeat.” Part of the problem in this second act is that the film keeps slipping away from the history in favor of lapses into movie convention. We’ve got Davy Crockett and fiddle having their “King of the World” moment on the eve of the final battle. We’ve got the vaguely rousing “we will go down in history” speech by Travis. We’ve got Jason Patric — surely, the only actor who’s been poised on the brink of the big time longer than Billy Crudup — dying of consumption for interminable stretches, with all the deathbed movie tropes that entails. (Jim Bowie’s bout with sickness holds very little dramatic impact, given that we know he’s on the way out anyway.) For almost all of this section of the film, even as a history buff, I was fidgeting for the big battle to start, and I couldn’t help thinking (and feeling guilty about it) that all of this men-under-siege grimness was done better a year ago in The Two Towers.

Yet, the one major respite from the middle hour’s blandness is Billy Bob Thornton as Davy (“He prefers David”) Crockett. While Sam Houston is sidelined, William Travis is a (pretty good) unknown, and Jim Bowie is moaning and clutching the sheets, Billy Bob’s Crockett is just trying to keep his chin up, and he’s the only character here who seems both realistic and larger-than-life. Throughout the film, even when forced into the most goofy lines or plot devices, Billy Bob/Crockett has a grim, self-deprecating smile on his face that says both “Can you believe it? I’m Davy Crockett!” and “How the hell did I end up dying in this backwater mission?” And some of the best sequences in the film involve Davy ruminating on his own myth, or remembering his days as an Indian fighter. In sum, Billy Bob is so good here that I spent most of the film contemplating who else I’d cast alongside Thornton for the definitive American History miniseries. Christopher Walken as 1850 Henry Clay? Fred Thompson as James Buchanan? Adrien Brody as Mexican War-era Lincoln? The possibilities are endless.

Only a Day Away.

Also new today, Tuck Pendleton, Bilbo Baggins, and Donnie Darko run around lamenting the dire consequences of global warming in The Core 2…um, I mean The Day After Tomorrow. The earlier teaser had made this seem potentially like an “after-the-cataclysm” sci-fi movie, but, nope, it’s just a disaster flick. Sigh.

Blockbuster Friday.

So this Friday, I finally caught up with a number of films I’ve been meaning to see, among them:

The Ring (US): A very scary premise, and after the teenage sleepover setpiece I thought this might be one for the ages. But, although the ending somewhat redeems it, this film feels like a missed opportunity. I haven’t yet seen Ringu, so I don’t know how it measures up, but turning the bulk of the film into a Nancy Drew mystery was a straight-up horrible call. After a truly frightening intro, the movie then spends most of its running time lining up all the images on the tape with the ghost story at hand, with all-too-frequent flashbacks in case you’re a short-term amnesiac or something. What everybody involved seems to have missed is that the movie would’ve been much scarier, at least to my mind, if some portions of the tape had just been left unexplained. Instead, the powers-that-be left unexplained key plot elements in the story, such as how little boy Watts sees dead people. I think in another director’s hands – a director unafraid to take risks and one who has a little more faith in her audience to put two and two together – this could’ve been very, very scary. (Although it’s not as bad a swing-and-a-miss as the US version of the The Vanishing.) So, with that in mind, I’m looking forward to seeing Ringu.

Igby Goes Down: I’m really not a big fan of the “unrealistically erudite young NY sophisticate” genre – I liked Rushmore a lot less than most people I know and I find Whit Stillman films to be absolutely insufferable. So when Igby suggests his brother’s a pedantic bore for liking Rilke and later wryly namedrops “The Island of Lost Toys,” I visibly shuddered. But, all in all, Kieran Culkin is rather appealing in the title role, and – with solid support from Susan Sarandon, Jeff Goldblum, Amanda Peet, Bill Pullman, and Jared Harris – this one turned out to be more enjoyable than I had earlier feared. Claire Danes seems miscast, and I just don’t get what it is about the one-note “clipped and distant” monotone of Ryan Phillipe’s delivery in every film that anyone finds appealing (he’s got less range than Keanu), but, in the end, this one made for a decent rental.

Far From Heaven: I’m hit-and-miss with Todd Haynes films – I thought Safe was splendid and bizarre, but didn’t vibe into the puzzling Velvet Goldmine at all (I am looking forward to his Dylan biopic project.) And, to be honest, this one suffered a bit from being the middle child in my Friday triple feature – I found my attention flagging quite a bit in the early going. Which is a shame, because in the end this turned out to be quite a good film, if a little on the slow side. I thought the retro look and feel started out rather gimmicky (for example, in the lime green police station where Julianne Moore picks up her husband), but settled down as the story took over. And I think I probably would have liked it more if (a) I hadn’t just sat through Igby and (b) if I were more well-versed in the films of Douglas Sirk. But, worth seeing, and Dennis Quaid and Patricia Clarkson were particularly good.

The Core: Without a doubt a poor, poor film, and yet I enjoyed myself much more than at the drab and slow-moving Dreamcatcher. It helped that this film is stocked with actors I generally root for – Aaron Eckhart, Bruce Greenwood, Delroy Lindo, and Stanley Tucci. (As for Hilary Swank…well, I haven’t yet seen Boys Don’t Cry, but I gotta believe she’s much better in that than she was in this, although Halle Berry won recently too and – frankly – she’s rarely any good either.) To be sure, the special effects are well on this side of lame – for example, when the crew get stopped somewhere in the center of the Earth and find themselves inexplicably on the Star Trek: TNG Away Team set…I half-expected Morlocks or Cave Trolls or something to show up. And the story makes very limited sense (as a friend of mine pointed out, how does gravity work on this ship? Everybody’s standing around normally while this bird is digging straight down.) But, as a popcorn film, The Core was reasonably entertaining for two hours, even though I really can’t recommend it.

Next up, I’d like to catch The Good Thief and Ghosts of the Abyss before the fanboy films start flying fast and furious on May 2, with the so-far-well-received X2.