trailer mix

The Company Men Trailer, Aspiring to Be the Ultimate Recession Movie

The Company Men, longtime ER producer John Wells’s directorial debut, follows a year in the life of Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, and Chris Cooper, three men dealing with the fallout of a corporate downsizing. But we only know this from seeing the movie at Sundance (where we really liked it), because, to judge from the unsubtle trailer, this is mostly a movie about Ben Affleck. Affleck plays a businessman who gets laid off and undergoes a sort of reverse–Good Will Hunting, getting a stronger and stronger Boston accent and a construction gig as his job difficulties pile up, much to the consternation of his wife and children (and Kevin Costner!). The trailer slams on the “This is a socially relevant tearjerker” button as hard as it possibly can, with scenes of Affleck crying “I’m a 37-year-old loser!” and his wife (Rachel Getting Married and Mad Men’s Rosemarie DeWitt) replying “But you have me!” And then there’s the magnificently over-the-top tagline, “In America we give our lives to our jobs. This fall it’s time to take them back.” By going to the movies?

The Company Men Trailer, Aspiring to Be the Ultimate Recession Movie