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<font size="2"><p>Movie Review
<font size="4"><br>Company Man</font>
<br>by David Ng</font>
<p><font size="6"><b>G</b></font>uaranteed to cure you of any Cold War nostalgia held over from <i>Thirteen Days</i> and television’s <i>Fail Safe</i>, <i>Company Man</i> is a sub-par Woody Allen spawn, a screwball comedy barely able to muster a single laugh in its 81 minute running time despite slavish adherence to the comic formula of Allen’s early stage plays (<i>Don’t Drink the Water</i> is the obvious inspiration here), and a game supporting performance Allen himself. Set in 1959, "a good time to be a white American male" according to its hero Allen Quimp, a nerdy instructor at a New England prep school, the movie attempts to explain how a monumental catastrophe such as the Bay of Pigs invasion could result from a white lie designed to please one’s wife. Writer / director Douglas McGrath aims for absurdity but achieves only cacophony as the wretched one-liners pile up and the stagy, stilted dialogue disintegrates into a yammering monotone.
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