'In Good Company' a study of masculinity

The 26-year-old actor Topher Grace has the narrow build and jumpy bones of a young man still growing into his adult body, so much so that even when standing at rest, he seems poised to take a leap forward. That makes him an ideal fit for the nimble, engagingly lightweight drama In Good Company, in which a young executive, having been bumped up the ladder too fast, first loses, then finds his footing by standing on the sturdy shoulders of a seasoned professional played with winning solidity by Dennis Quaid.

Grace is Carter Duryea, a shark who's made his dubious reputation selling mobile phones to children and has been promoted to run the advertising department of a magazine with the resonant name of Sports America. The executive whom Carter is meant to make redundant is the 51-year-old Dan Foreman.

A ruggedly appealing adult man who brings out the best in everyone lucky enough to land inside his periphery, Dan has a picture-perfect family and the loyalty of those who work for him. He's an unabashedly old-fashioned masculine type, the kind of character Quaid has been slow-cooking to perfection over the years and which, on American screens at least, has lately gone missing.

Written and directed by Paul Weitz, In Good Company is a gently revisionist fairy tale about good versus evil set on the battlefield of contemporary corporate culture, a site of our leading blood sport. Mostly, though, the movie is about men: Men without fathers, men without sons, men with wives who work and make them feel like less than a man and men with wives who, like Dan's wife, Ann (Marg Helgenberger), give them the gift of both an exquisitely preserved figure and a fertile womb.

For Dan -- who rises at 4:30am to go to work so he can sustain his beautiful family in their beautiful home, who conducts business with a firm handshake and a squared jaw -- being a man isn't a roll of the genetic dice, an accident of birth; it's a calling.

In many respects, In Good Company is very much of a piece with Weitz's last feature, About a Boy, which he directed with his brother, Chris Weitz. (The two produced this new film themselves.) Based on the Nick Hornby novel, About a Boy traces the long-delayed maturation of a single man who, having resisted adulthood and all that it implies (namely, the steady love of one woman), is suddenly forced into caring for a young boy. A similar dynamic drives In Good Company.

Soon after Carter bumps Dan from his position and corner office, the older man discovers that his new boss can't hack it. Not simply because Carter lacks the requisite professional experience, but also and principally because he's just a kid rattling inside grown-up armor.

After Carter becomes involved with Dan's daughter, Alex (Scarlett Johansson), this nascent father-son relationship grows more complicated, if only on the surface. A sweetly superficial interlude, the couple's affair fizzes rather than sizzles, mostly because the love that really matters here isn't between Alex and Carter, but between Carter and Dan.

Like Ann, who holds up a flattering mirror to Dan, Alex exists mostly as a reflection of her lover's and her father's deeper selves. This is more of an observation than a strong complaint. The focus of In Good Company is decidedly on the men. But this is one of those unusual American movies in which the women, though manifestly marginal to the story's core meaning, have inner lives that linger long after the characters have served their purpose.