Although it’s been twenty years since the release of In Good Company it continues to be increasingly relevant now and remains one of my favorite films of these past two decades. The strong narrative of how corporate culture stubbornly remains a destructive force in our personal lives and seeks to continually divide its workers against each other will always be invaluable in real life. In Good Company also clearly illustrates the precarious position that aging corporate executives find themselves in – as younger competitors are coming to dethrone them with the devious encouragement of their own corporate bosses.
This is the contentious position that Dan Foreman (played by Dennis Quaid) finds himself in as the aging advertising executive of a major sports magazine. Anything to do with professional sports seems automatically cutthroat as it is – to say nothing of a high profile position in advertising with a Sports Illustrated style magazine where tremendous amounts of precious company money is at stake. Foreman’s position now becomes more fragile than before as his magazine is bought up by another greedy, predatory, international conglomerate with its own profit maximizing agenda.
At the forefront of this agenda is the dubious concept of “synergy” wherein corporations have this tunnel vision that more financial benefits are a given when companies merge together for greater business efficiency and operating improvements. In actuality, it’s more about eliminating jobs to bump those profits up than it is about improvements to business processes. With this in mind Foreman is put in the humiliating position of firing some long term colleagues and then is further demeaned when demoted from his position. This is where his younger replacement Carter Duryea (Topher Grace) comes in, a so-called business school genius who will whip everything into place in Dan’s department at Sports America.
In reality Dan will end up doing much of the work – and Carter will reap the credits. In Good Company underscores how rankling it is for a seasoned pro like Dan being put out to pasture by an upstart corporate drone who presumably will grovel and accept half the pay to be that corporate lap dog. Meanwhile, Dan is under the stress of how to support this family of two daughters and a wife expecting their third child, upcoming college expenses for the older daughters, taking out a second mortgage on the home to pay for all of this. This is precisely where the American dream becomes more fragile – with the bottom about to fall out. Nevertheless, Dan and Carter (who has enough personal problems of his own) are forced into an uneasy alliance as neither can completely be independent of the other to take care of business needs and both are forced further under the Globecom corporate jackboot.
Not surprisingly, this tense state of affairs eventually explodes when Dan finds out his daughter Alex (Scarlett Johansson) is dating the enemy – and one can only imagine that Dan must feel that the sky is falling in – and what did he do to deserve any of this? However, Carter is deserving of some sympathy too as he navigates the treachery of corporate life which can be a lonely course to follow as viewers will understand when watching In Good Company. He lacks a stable, loving family, finds it increasingly difficult to cope with loneliness and the sense of isolation and job insecurity that comes with corporate backstabbing and competitiveness.
The main takeaway from In Good Company is that it’s still possible to triumph over corporate machinations, restore your self-confidence and recover your dignity. For those who are able to get free of the corporate rat-race, making hard, carefully thought choices is an imperative. This may require drastic life-style changes such as cutting back and simplifying our lifestyles with less focus on showy, status-seeking material things. Not being obsessed with perks and entitlements also go along way towards improving emotional and spiritual health. This can also bring independence from excessive worries. It’s certainly better to try and achieve this while being young like Carter before being saddled with too many responsibilities like Dan was faced with.
