Corporate Affairs

''Corporate Affairs'' (''Ted's MBA'') 4 ½ (of 5 stars)

Dan Cohen, whose ''Diamond Men'' was a Cinematique hit, again upends the world of commerce in ''Corporate Affairs.''

Breckin Meyer plays Ted, who's promoted beyond his dreams, and certainly beyond his training or experience. But he's a quick thinker who solves corporate glitches as fast as his inept colleagues can create them around him. His computer work requires extensive travel, which leads to on-the-road trysts, unbeknownst to his wife. The software he's servicing is a house of cards. So is his personal life. Each time they start to tumble down, he reshuffles and emerges the victor. But how long can he juggle all of these conflicts without imploding? Writer/director Cohen masters sarcastic wit just as Ted earns his master's on the road to oblivion.

-- Film Critic Jeff Farance

Seriously this movie had no redeemable qualities other than a few gratuitous sex scenes. The story was flat and uninteresting. The production quality was terrible. The musical score was absolute garbage. The characters were terrible. Do yourself a favour and watch Gigli instead as it's probably more interesting than this movie. You can probably watch the whole movie in 20 minutes by hitting the fast forward button and still not miss anything. It's the story about a guy who gets a promotion to VP and plunges into a world of infidelity - sleeping with women in every city he travels too. It's about as exciting as watching paint dry really.

There are some, to me, "customizations" that just ruined this movie for me... in a way. The opening of the movie about Harrisburg (not just Harrisburg now was it?). For the fact the movie goes into depth about this city and alters it's reality. Where'd all those white kids come from? What a misrepresentation of the city and why? "ignorance is bliss". That whole introduction is TRASH. You stole my struggles - it DOES go both ways. Maybe he should have been throwing fists at the bus stop or playing ball at CITY ISLAND...like where was that place? If we're going to go into corny detail about a make believe Harrisburg. Stealing candy with paper bags? The Details in this movie... if you're saying they're stealing, why would they have paper bags? To visually show they were stealing? Huh? Number 1, my friends said stealing candy wasn't easy let alone fill your own brown bag in the corner shop. Which we ALL know the one next to Foose was the store to go to and everything was behind wire there....did anyone actually spend a hot minute there or were yall too scared? The owner of that store did get murdered though. Such a good guy - always got honey buns... Only accurate thing was a fun childhood. If the entire movie is like this I'll never be able to finish it. Maybe it's because this movie falls exactly in my life timeline, where I grew up, went to college.... and it's too inaccurate for me to accept. I care too much about details and not hiding all the actual kids in the city. I mean, you picked randoms for other parts of the movie ... Dare I say the intro, at least, is very selective with the kids, it's pretty sad.

Let me say, I have never been against so called low-budget movies. Quite on the contrary I prefer them to high quality 'bunch of great special effects' movie.

That was one of the reasons to watch Corporate Affairs for me. But the movie turned out to be a complete disappointment for me. The story was not of a really great deal: rather quite banal and boring Hollywod lifeline. The movie discusses usual western values: family, career, money, faith, fidelity and ability to keep all of them.

Initially I tended to like the plot: I believe, it's quite promising. I hoped that it would be full of contradictions and conflicts between bosses and employees, money and fidelity, family and vices.

But all those ideas were just neglected. There was no fight, no conflict. I lost my interest after approximately 30 minutes. Seemed that trying to learn the best 'movie tricks' from Hollywood and adopting it in the picture authors just made another stock low quality drama.

I am writing this as I am watching this halfway through. I really do not know if I find the power to finish this, but even If I do not no harm done. The film is flooded with clichés, beyond belief. The actors do not appear to believe a line they speak, the result is almost a parody. The movie is about a programmer being promoted to manager and not being able to cope with it. But the whole storyline is so fictional that none of the stuff it narrates would happen in real life of a programmer aspiring to become a manager. And yes, I am a professional programmer. Its a real shame because some actors are decent in other films they have appeared.

PS. My girlfriend just ejected the DVD before seeing the end. No harm done whatsoever.