Company Man Reviewed and the Academy Awards

ROVIN' AND RAVIN' WITH MIKE

Bad Company Man and the Oscars

So, I chose to see Company Man, and it leaves me wondering if I would have been kinder to myself to have seen Tomcats, which as my television is constantly reminding me, opens this weekend. What a great cast in Company Man, headed by Sigourney Weaver (yes, she is getting around a lot these days), but what a great waste. I was really looking forward to this film, especially after being blasted by the television ads for the feline flick that I’ve already mentioned.

Much of the blame has to go to Douglas McGrath, since he wears three hats, as writer, director, and actor, playing Allen Quimp, an English teacher in the 1950’s who pretends to be a CIA agent, and that leads him to Cuba just in time for Castro’s revolution. Yeah, sure. That plot twist is as unlikely as Weaver actually being being married to a Quimp.

OK, we are at the movies, and movies are all about fantasy, but this is more about… well, I’m not sure what it is about, just simply bad film-making, film-writing, and film-acting… not gloriously, roaringly bad, but just boringly bad. There’s no center, no motivation, no character development, no purpose, and, at least with the crowd (perhaps group is a more honest assessment) that I saw it with, no laughs. None. And with that, I’ll turn you over to Charles Taylor in Salon.com, perhaps the only place on the Internet with movie reviews more long-winded than the ones at R&R.

Well, for laughs, we had the Oscars, which this year were mercifully short on Crystal. I couldn’t believe that the once wild and crazy guy Steve Martin brought so much class and droll humor to the affair (not that Russell Crowe, the Aussie who always looks as if he has sat through one too many didgeridoo concerts, cracked a smile).

But, let’s face it. The Oscars are about politics, money, publicity, not about achievement in film. (Talk about fantasy.) You can check out all the damage at the official Oscar site, but the truth is, the Independent Spirit Awards seem more pertinent. I can’t really quarrel with the selection of Crowe and Julia Roberts to receive best actor/actress Oscars, but Javier Bardem (Before Night Falls) and Ellen Burstyn (Requiem for a Dream) were far worthier--and did get the Independent Spirit Awards. Burstyn and Bardem were great. Roberts and Crowe were good, but both their films gave us something to crow about. I wonder if this year’s awards weren’t in some way a retreat from last year’s sweep by American Beauty. This year, we had heroes and heroines all through the big three: Gladiator, Erin Brockovich, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Truly, for the past few weeks, the real heroes have been the long-suffering reviewers doing their best to warn you to keep your feet dry, your heart full of noble thoughts, and your rear end snug in own your recliner, the better to catch some grand old films on cable or video.