As the kids would say, "that's so random..."
I really wanted this to be about corporate America. And it will be, I promise. But there are other things on my mind.
Scrolling through the weekend...
I had a chance to see "In Good Company." I was forwarned by my teenage daughter that it really wasn't very good. On the other hand, a host of very positive reviews elsewhere and I found myself at the local multi-plex.
It turns out, both were right and that's not necessarily a good thing. From a performance standpoint, it was just fine. But now I do understand where my daughter was coming from. First, the marketing simply doesn't match the movie. Despite what you might believe from the ads you've seen, this is not a simple boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, contrived circumstances pull them apart, and love wins in the end. That's the kind of movies teenage girls, and their mothers, like most. But that wasn't this movie. There were breezy comic moments, to be sure. But the movie was much less boy-meets-girl than I suspect anyone in the audience could have imagined based on the TV ads.
Second, in the end I'm just not sure what the heck the movie was about which ultimately left me frustrated. When you pitch a movie idea to a studio, the rule of thumb is to keep it to one sentence. If it takes much more than that, there's little chance it will get made, unless you plan on distributing your "vision" yourself. This is something to keep in mind as you watch. When a movie's over, try to figure out that one-sentence pitch. If you can do that, chances are the movie was successful. I've struggled for the last two days to figure out the one-sentence pitch of this movie. "Early 50s corporate manager, too young to retire and too old to start over, struggles to find his place in today's corporate environment"? "Mid-20s, upwardly mobile corporate hot shot stuggles to find his place in today's corporate environment"? If either were the case, then how does the Topher Grace/Scarlett Johanson "relationship" figure into this matrix? Simply put, it doesn't and, I suspect, that's why the relationship itself lost its steam in the movie and, ultimately, is the reason why I think my daughter and her friends were unimpressed.
The sense I get is that the director, or perhaps the writer, didn't want to make another "romantic comedy" as if that's a bad thing. I don't accept that premise. Irrespective of the subject matter, a movie that knows what it wants to achieve and goes out and does just that will always be a successful movie. In the romantic comedy genre, think "My Best Friend's Wedding", "Love, Actually" or "Notting Hill." Nothing necessarily weighty in the subject matter, but in each case the movie was a success. The writers, directors, and actors all understood what they were trying to accomplish and then set about doing so. And in each case the experience was fulfilling.
But here, if anything was clear, the writer, director and the studio were not on the same page. Too many compromises were made in the editing. The sense I got was that the writer wanted to say something about corporate America. The studio wanted a romantic comedy. The poor director tried to balance the two and didn't end up delivering on either.
To me, the scene that perhaps served as the best metaphor for this movie occurred when Topher Grace's character is talked into buying the Porsche and crashes it as he drives off the lot. The crash didn't render the car inoperable, but it certainly took the steam out of the experience. So much promise, so little payoff.
Which brings me to...
The Pittsburgh/New England AFC Championship game. If you were a Pittsburgh fan, you had to like your chances. It had all the elements. History--never has a team with such a lofty record been denied a Super Bowl birth. Fate--the stellar record of their pact-with-the-devil quarter, Ben Roethlisberger. But in the end, they crashed and burned. Not only to a better team but a better coach. Bill Cowher comes from the Marty Schottenheimer coaching tree, having got his coaching start under Marty as the special teams coach with the Cleveland Browns. Marty has proven to be the ultimate tease as a coach, which is why he remains employed, albeit with his fifth team. He can get a team on the precipice, but like an undersized groom with an oversized bride, he can't lift the goods over the threshold. So too it appears with Bill. He's now lost 3 AFC Championships and one Super Bowl. And while I'm usually a team kind of guy, yesterday's loss is laid at his feet. With the game in the balance and the opportunity to do something great, he laid up, eschewing a chance to get within 7 points with nearly the entire fourth quarter to play in favor of a rather meaningless field goal. If ever there was a large sucking sound, that was it. You could visibly hear the air come out of the team, the fans and the entire city. I suspect the www.firebillcowher.com web site was up and running within seconds. I remember the last time I saw that kind of lay-up. It was at the 15th hole of the 1993 Masters when Chip Beck, three strokes down with four holes to play, refused to try and reach the reachable par 5 15th. Instead, he laid up, tried to get it close with the third and putt in for a birdie, none of which happened. Since that time, Beck has all but disappeared from the PGA Tour (where he once was an elite player and former Ryder Cup member). While I haven't yet checked the local papers, I'm suspecting there's a healthy dose of Pittsburghers just praying that Bill Schottencowher will do the same.
Scrolling through the weekend...
I had a chance to see "In Good Company." I was forwarned by my teenage daughter that it really wasn't very good. On the other hand, a host of very positive reviews elsewhere and I found myself at the local multi-plex.
It turns out, both were right and that's not necessarily a good thing. From a performance standpoint, it was just fine. But now I do understand where my daughter was coming from. First, the marketing simply doesn't match the movie. Despite what you might believe from the ads you've seen, this is not a simple boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, contrived circumstances pull them apart, and love wins in the end. That's the kind of movies teenage girls, and their mothers, like most. But that wasn't this movie. There were breezy comic moments, to be sure. But the movie was much less boy-meets-girl than I suspect anyone in the audience could have imagined based on the TV ads.
Second, in the end I'm just not sure what the heck the movie was about which ultimately left me frustrated. When you pitch a movie idea to a studio, the rule of thumb is to keep it to one sentence. If it takes much more than that, there's little chance it will get made, unless you plan on distributing your "vision" yourself. This is something to keep in mind as you watch. When a movie's over, try to figure out that one-sentence pitch. If you can do that, chances are the movie was successful. I've struggled for the last two days to figure out the one-sentence pitch of this movie. "Early 50s corporate manager, too young to retire and too old to start over, struggles to find his place in today's corporate environment"? "Mid-20s, upwardly mobile corporate hot shot stuggles to find his place in today's corporate environment"? If either were the case, then how does the Topher Grace/Scarlett Johanson "relationship" figure into this matrix? Simply put, it doesn't and, I suspect, that's why the relationship itself lost its steam in the movie and, ultimately, is the reason why I think my daughter and her friends were unimpressed.
The sense I get is that the director, or perhaps the writer, didn't want to make another "romantic comedy" as if that's a bad thing. I don't accept that premise. Irrespective of the subject matter, a movie that knows what it wants to achieve and goes out and does just that will always be a successful movie. In the romantic comedy genre, think "My Best Friend's Wedding", "Love, Actually" or "Notting Hill." Nothing necessarily weighty in the subject matter, but in each case the movie was a success. The writers, directors, and actors all understood what they were trying to accomplish and then set about doing so. And in each case the experience was fulfilling.
But here, if anything was clear, the writer, director and the studio were not on the same page. Too many compromises were made in the editing. The sense I got was that the writer wanted to say something about corporate America. The studio wanted a romantic comedy. The poor director tried to balance the two and didn't end up delivering on either.
To me, the scene that perhaps served as the best metaphor for this movie occurred when Topher Grace's character is talked into buying the Porsche and crashes it as he drives off the lot. The crash didn't render the car inoperable, but it certainly took the steam out of the experience. So much promise, so little payoff.
Which brings me to...
The Pittsburgh/New England AFC Championship game. If you were a Pittsburgh fan, you had to like your chances. It had all the elements. History--never has a team with such a lofty record been denied a Super Bowl birth. Fate--the stellar record of their pact-with-the-devil quarter, Ben Roethlisberger. But in the end, they crashed and burned. Not only to a better team but a better coach. Bill Cowher comes from the Marty Schottenheimer coaching tree, having got his coaching start under Marty as the special teams coach with the Cleveland Browns. Marty has proven to be the ultimate tease as a coach, which is why he remains employed, albeit with his fifth team. He can get a team on the precipice, but like an undersized groom with an oversized bride, he can't lift the goods over the threshold. So too it appears with Bill. He's now lost 3 AFC Championships and one Super Bowl. And while I'm usually a team kind of guy, yesterday's loss is laid at his feet. With the game in the balance and the opportunity to do something great, he laid up, eschewing a chance to get within 7 points with nearly the entire fourth quarter to play in favor of a rather meaningless field goal. If ever there was a large sucking sound, that was it. You could visibly hear the air come out of the team, the fans and the entire city. I suspect the www.firebillcowher.com web site was up and running within seconds. I remember the last time I saw that kind of lay-up. It was at the 15th hole of the 1993 Masters when Chip Beck, three strokes down with four holes to play, refused to try and reach the reachable par 5 15th. Instead, he laid up, tried to get it close with the third and putt in for a birdie, none of which happened. Since that time, Beck has all but disappeared from the PGA Tour (where he once was an elite player and former Ryder Cup member). While I haven't yet checked the local papers, I'm suspecting there's a healthy dose of Pittsburghers just praying that Bill Schottencowher will do the same.
posted by Gary Benz @ 4:02 PM
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