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

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.

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.

Wow, this movie was absolutely rubbish. It is listed as a comedy, yet there was nothing funny about it. And the story just never caught on, director Dan Cohen threw the bait out there alright, but nothing took hold. And in fact, it was a struggle to keep watching this movie.

I made it 32 minutes into this boring snoozefest before my interest in the movie fully dissipated and I just simply gave up. I stopped the DVD and went on to another movie instead.

From what I managed to see, this movie is about married man Ted (played by Breckin Meyer) who is promoted and finds a new world full of temptation and beautiful women that comes along with the promotion.

It was as if even the acting talents in the movie weren't even committed to the story and the movie as well, and that did push the movie downward.

All in all, "Corporate Affairs" was unfathomably boring and uninteresting. As such, it scores a meager two out of ten stars only from me.