Grace, Quaid make for 'Good Company'

"In Good Company" was supposed to be released amid a great deal of buzz late last year as a candidate for awards consideration. Universal, the film's distributor, in its "infinite wisdom" waited to unleash the flick in January (i.e. cinema's dumping grounds). While "Company" couldn't have competed with Oscar powerhouses such as "Million Dollar Baby" and "The Aviator," it's a charming little movie that might've garnered Topher Grace a supporting actor nomination for his star-making turn. Now that it's out on DVD, that'll be up to you to decide.\nGrace hilariously stars as Carter Duryea, a 26-year-old hell-bent on ascending the corporate ladder. In doing so, he's ruined his young, loveless marriage to Kimberly (Selma Blair) and inadvertently stomped all over the feelings of Dan Foreman (a sterling Dennis Quaid), the 51-year-old man whose job he's just taken as head of ad sales at Sports America magazine. Further complicating matters, Dan's wife, Ann (Marg Helgenberger), is unexpectedly pregnant with their third child, and his eldest daughter, Alex (Scarlett Johansson), has just been accepted to NYU, but he'll need to take out a second mortgage on the family home to afford the costly tuition bills -- this all in the face of demotion and constant threats of downsizing. Adding insult to injury; Carter's begun dating Alex.\nWhile this sounds as if it were a Lifetime movie for the testosterone set -- and it is to some extent -- it's also so much more. Reminiscent of Cameron Crowe's "Jerry Maguire," "Company" is brimming with humor and heart. Inadequately advertised as a romantic comedy between Grace and Johansson, the film is far more centered on the relationship between Grace and Quaid and the notion of what it takes to be a good, principled man amid contemporary conglomeration.\nWhile the DVD isn't up to snuff with the quality of the movie itself, it's still quite good. Writer/director Paul Weitz (who directed "American Pie" and "About a Boy" with his brother, Chris) and Grace take part in an entertainingly illuminating commentary. There are also numerous deleted scenes that can be played with or without Weitz's commentary. Unlike most cut scenes, much of what's here is worthwhile and was only excised for the sake of a reasonable runtime. A series of featurettes which together spell "Synergy" (the film's original title) are also available. These can be played all at once for the sake of convenience, though they aren't particularly informative.\nIf you missed "In Good Company" in theaters, there's no better time than the present to encounter this charming gem of a movie on DVD.