Company Man
Company Man
PG-13 | 09 March 2000 (USA)
Company Man Trailers

In the 1960's, a school teacher pretends to be a CIA spy to get his nagging wife off his back. He helps a Russian ballet dancer defect and is then sent to Cuba to locate "Agent X" for the CIA.

Reviews
Thulemanden

An energetic and entertaining movie with some pretty original scenes although much of the plot is from real life.Weaver is doing a fine and wholehearted job trying to grab the main role, but the role is more suited for Goldie Hawn.Cumming is delivering a 100% effort as general Batista which also threatens to steal the main part.The role of Fidel Castro is also well performed.McGrath as office Quimp on the other hand is weakly covered, although I grant he can sing.Surprisingly the uncredited Woddy Allen appears but is more Woody Allen than being the role he covers. Woody is totally out of sync with the movie and does as he pleases apparently.The mission of the movie could be to criticize CIA's secret missions for the US and does a fine job of that.The problem with the movie seem to be the instruction alone.A promise of a follow-up, this time in Vietnam is made in the end.

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augustdragon

Did you know you could get a double agent to confess merely by spending the day correcting his grammar? Neither did I, until I saw this movie.Douglas McGrath (who also co-wrote and co-directed) is Allen Quimp (yup, rhymes with "wimp"), a nerdy high-school grammar - and sometimes driver's ed - teacher in 1950's America. His over-achieving family think he's a loser and don't understand his all-consuming dream to rid the world of bad grammar. So, one day he tells his father-in-law a little white lie: he's really an agent with the CIA. Pretty soon the whole community knows, including a visiting Russian ballet star (Ryan Phillipe), who wants to defect- to Quimp! One thing leads to another, and the CIA ends up really recruiting Quimp and sending him to Cuba, where he roots out the double agent, becomes involved in several plots to assassinate (or at least humiliate) Castro, and becomes a DJ, playing songs that the CIA take as a coded request to invade the Bay of Pigs.Never quite "sidesplittingly funny," as the back of the box boasts, but mildly amusing and watchable, with the "mongoose in my shorts" bit being probably the funniest scene in the movie; coming in at a close second is Alan Cumming's rendition of "Diamonds Are a Boy's Best Friend" (don't ask!).Worth watching mainly for the performances. McGrath is likable as the clueless Quimp; Sigourney Weaver is perfect as Quimp's over-bearing and social-climbing wife. Alan Cumming doesn't seem to have much to do in his scenes, but makes the most of them, amusingly bringing to life his "I-can't-believe-this-guy-was-a-Cuban-dictator" character. John Turturro's character is easily the funniest - an agent who's gone a bit around-the-bend and become a raving lunatic bent on assassinating Fidel Castro- played by Anthony LaPaglia, who wins the "most unlikely casting" prize- which is not to say it wasn't a good choice! Amusing and likable, but never hilarious. This one goes somewhere in the grey area between C+ and B-. (Or two and a quarter stars out of four.)

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ccrashh

A slapstick, stupid comedy for intelligent people. I was pleasantly surprised and recommend it to anyone who isn't so far into crap like The Fast and the Furious to enjoy a movie filled with outrageous satire and in-jokes. If you don't know your history, as it concerns Cuba, go back to munching popcorn and watching some tepid "action/adventure" flick.

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George Parker

"Company Man" conjures up a silly history lesson as it weaves a comedic story of the Castro Cuban coup vis-a-vis its central character (McGrath); an English teach turned CIA operative. A funny, surprisingly star-studded, and cleverly crafted little comedy romp with rampant nonsense, "CM" answers many questions such as where that thing on Gorbachev's head came from and why the Bay of Pigs invasion failed. Fun stuff for those into clever nonsense.

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