The Company Men (2010)
Starring Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, Maria Bello, Craig T. Nelson, Rosemarie Dewitt, and Kevin Costner
Directed by John Wells
The Company Men is certainly a movie "for our times" as it weaves the tale of three corporate employees who lose their jobs due to downsizing. While the flick may be entirely relevant in this period of high unemployment rates, it's simply not a very good story. Its three main characters have the exact trajectories one would expect -- I had each of their resolutions pegged right at the get-go -- and writer-director John Wells isn't able to manage to keep things the least bit interesting.
Nursing a Boston accent that (considering his roots) surprisingly wavers, Ben Affleck is Bobby, "the young one" of the bunch who loses his white collar job when his company downsizes. Finding it difficult to give up all he's had -- the country club membership, the Porsche, the fancy house -- he begins to have trouble supporting his family. But Bobby isn't the only one who loses his job. Fifty-something Phil (Chris Cooper) also gets the ax and it's blatantly evident from the very beginning that Phil's a guy that's not gonna handle things like this all that well. The road he travels down is one that has been travelled by many a movie character and while it's believable, it's too obvious to come as a surprising turn of events. Finally, Bobby and Phil's boss, Gene (Tommy Lee Jones) gets the boot, but finds that perhaps his firing may have been a blessing in disguise.
The biggest problem with The Company Men is that despite the fact that there could have been something quite substantive based on the subject manner, the film flounders in blandness. The flick needs more bite and oomph, but instead Bobby, Phil, and Gene feel like simply "stock character types" pulled from some "Screenwriting 101" class. There's a story to be told in grown men losing their jobs and being forced to reexamine their lives, but it's certainly not a story that's told well here.
The biggest problem with The Company Men is that despite the fact that there could have been something quite substantive based on the subject manner, the film flounders in blandness. The flick needs more bite and oomph, but instead Bobby, Phil, and Gene feel like simply "stock character types" pulled from some "Screenwriting 101" class. There's a story to be told in grown men losing their jobs and being forced to reexamine their lives, but it's certainly not a story that's told well here.
The RyMickey Rating: D+
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