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Company, The
EMAILPRINTSony Pictures Classics
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 32 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 18 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Musical
Written by:
Barbara Turner (also story)
Neve Campbell (story)
Directed by: Robert Altman
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 25, 2003
DVD: June 1, 2004
Running Time: 112 minutes, Color
Origin: USA / Germany
Summary
RATING: PG-13 on appeal for brief strong language, some nudity and sexual content
Starring Neve Campbell, Malcolm McDowell, James Franco, Barbara E. Robertson, William Dick, Susie Cusack, Marilyn Dodds Frank, and John Lordan
This ensemble drama about the life of a company of ballet dancers focuses on a young dancer (Campbell) on the verge of becoming a principal dancer.
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Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Like many Altman movies, this is less a dramatic story to follow than an atmospheric environment to visit.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
It is sheer brilliance and testament to the vitality of an old master.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Charles Taylor
Robert Altman's surpassingly beautiful ballet movie feels lighter than air -- but in fact it's the great director's most tender and memorable film in years.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
A funny valentine by an old master, woos us into the dance.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Why did it take me so long to see what was right there in front of my face -- that The Company is the closest that Robert Altman has come to making an autobiographical film?
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Altman, showing the ardor and assurance of a master, pulls us into his film with seductive power. You won't want to miss a thing.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Director and dancers catch the audience up in a web of imagination.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The key to The Company is the quiet, focused rapture of Neve Campbell, who formally trained in ballet and performed all of her on-screen dances. The tranquil delight she takes in her body becomes its own eloquent form of acting.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Clearly Mr. Altman was enthralled by the company's work process, an alchemy through which sweat and muscularity on the rehearsal-room floor become exquisite abstractions on stage. His pleasure is infectious.
The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
It should be a personal triumph or a personal tragedy, but it's neither: just another moment between curtain-rise and curtain-fall in the glorious business of creating beauty.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
A wonderfully vivid and engaging theatrical experience.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Robert Altman takes an elegant, appealingly unemphatic look at the world of ballet.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
Makes the world of ballet, seen by so many as rarefied, accessible and exciting, a rigorous art that yields breathtaking results.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
Knowing that the director is Robert Altman gives you a good idea of what to expect: a demimonde of locker-room chatter, catty sniping, backstage politics, high art and low self-esteem. Altman constructs the movie with the same cross-currents of his other ensemble movies.
Read Full Review >New York Post Megan Lehmann
Campbell is a sweet presence and a capable dancer, featured in a theatrical pas de deux on an open-air stage during a wild thunderstorm that is one of the film's visual highlights.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
A love letter to performers who put their egos and bodies on the line.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Neve Campbell, who cowrote the story with scenarist Barbara Turner, plays one of the dancers; although her character isn't especially interesting, her story furnishes a minimal narrative thread to hold the rest together.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
Enjoyably lithe and droll yet somehow almost water-soluble; it seems to dissolve onscreen.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
On the plus side, The Company is directed by Robert Altman, who's clearly drawn in by the rare opportunity of putting ballet on film, and who responds brilliantly...The rest of the time, the film fails to catch us up in the workaday intrigues of its characters (most of whom are played by real Joffrey dancers) the way Altman can when he's working in top form.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Though the ballets themselves are beautifully shot, they lean heavily in the direction of gimmicky and prop-heavy pieces; they're visually interesting but, by and large, they're not great dance.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak
Dedicates itself to the beauty and thrill of bodies and motion and in doing so upstages Altman's cinematic conduit. The medium ultimately surpasses its messenger.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Robert Altman's gossamer, tension-free meditation on the ballet life, never quite recovers from a performance scene that arrives about 20 minutes in.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
The good thing about The Company is that nothing much happens. The bad thing about The Company is that nothing much happens.
Read Full Review >Empire Angie Errigo
Dramatic disappointment aside, there is a feel for the unglamorous, demanding lives of the real dancers.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
It's plotless. It fits no category -- "docudrama tone poem" probably comes closest.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
This is a dull, lifeless production that will find favor only with those with an insider's perspective or who feel compelled to praise the acclaimed director's every film, no matter how out-of-touch and pretentious it may be.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
Not a farce, or comedy or drama, but essentially a doodle interrupted by nouveau ballet performances, the entire contraption assembled to please the ego of Neve Campbell.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Melissa Levine
No character other than Antonelli is developed enough to register. Worse, the minor characters, most of whom are played by Joffrey dancers, are simply not actors.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones
When The Company owns up to what it is -– a performance piece -– it’s glorious. Everything else -– the window-dressing of a fiction film -– just gums up that gloriousness.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.8 (out of 10) based on 18 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Josh C gave it a0:
Robert Altman has been plugging away on movie sets, manufacturing adroit classics, odious train wrecks, and—most often—ambitious mediocrities for more than five decades. Virtually every gracious label our culture has for individualists has been garlanded upon him at one point or another. But it may be his dogged prolificness that makes him so unreliable. Too easily inspired, too repetitive, and too seduced by sophomoric ideas, Altman would seem to rather make a crummy movie than make no movie at all. The Company, his 36th feature (not counting a slew of TV movies and miniseries), is Altman-doing-ballet, just as he's done war hospitals, country music, health faddism, Yankee family rites, fashion, jazz, and Brit class combat. All of the familiar Altman tools—overheard dialogue, distracted zooms, multi-plane character clutter, persona thumbnailing—are out on the table, but his sardonic tone (which has varied from razor-sharp to rubber-chicken-ish) is not. The entire contraption assembled to please the ego of Neve Campbell. Altman didn't (or couldn't) trick out the rest of the film as he often does with colorful cameos, but the anemic script hungers for a hectic Rene Auberjonois or Bob Balaban walk-on. Containing little we haven't seen in dozens of behind-the-tutu documentaries, the scenes of rehearsal and choreographic tweaking can nonetheless be interesting in a working-reality manner, but The Company provides no connective tissue. The rigors of practice, the toll on body and soul—not on the radar. There's not only no drama, there are no situations. Everything on the screen is rote and empty. This film proves that Altman is the most overrated American filmmaker of the last 35 years.
Helen S. gave it a2:
Can I say BORING? I just rented this and fell asleep 20 minutes into it. There is no story line, no character development and some of the choreography looks like it's making fun of ballet. Neve Campbell is non-existent and has barely any lines. What is the point of this movie?
Marg gave it a0:
Worst movie I've ever seen actually. NOTHING happens. Nothing. At all.
Italo D. gave it a9:
Great piece. Nice to see pretty faces (Campbell and Franco) doing great performances. Altman knows how filme real life. Of course, most of the goodness on this movie is due to the cut.
Bir Kaur K. gave it a 10:
Simply exquisite!
Marcus gave it an 8:
Altman's status as an auteur is solidified here. Whether accomplishing that without a real storyline makes the movie a greater or lesser work of art is up for debate. The Company remains an excellent film and anyone half-willing to see a documentary will appreciate it.
Joe Stuff gave it a 3:
First off, the dancing looks great in this film. Instead of just showing the production numbers from standard angles, Altman really let's us weave in and out of the dancers...it makes you feel very close to the action and very real. Too bad that the rest of the movie is left to be so 'real' as well. Aside from the dance, the whole movie is so QUIET! The scenes between the dances seem badly improved by non-actors (they are). The whole movie was just awkward. 80 minutes in I'm thinking that I just want to leave (which I never do) and how I wish the movie would just end. Suddenly, the film started to rattle and it MELTED right in front of my eyes. True story. So yes, I've never seen the ending with the whole Blue Snake dance but the 80 minutes I saw had some good dance and horrible filler in-between. There's something to be said for movies with no plot...the same can't be said for movies with no point.
