Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

38 12 Rounds
48 17 Again
76 Adventureland
48 Angels & Demons
54 Battle for Terra
xx Bruno
80 Coraline
40 Dance Flick
83 Drag Me to Hell
72 Earth
45 Fast & Furious
61 Fighting
34 Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
72 Gran Torino
73 Hangover, The
47 Hannah Montana: The Movie
51 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
54 Imagine That
41 Knowing
32 Land of the Lost
56 Monsters vs. Aliens
34 My Life in Ruins
51 My Sister's Keeper
46 Next Day Air
42 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
54 Observe and Report
25 Obsessed
48 Proposal, The
70 Public Enemies
61 Soloist, The
83 Star Trek
64 State of Play
55 Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The
52 Terminator Salvation
35 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
77 Under the Sea 3D
88 Up
43 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
34 Year One

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Company, The
Sony Pictures Classics


5.8

based on 32 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 18 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA 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.

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Musical
WRITTEN BY:	Barbara Turner (also story) Neve Campbell (story)
DIRECTED BY:	Robert Altman
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: June 1, 2004 Video: June 1, 2004 Theatrical: December 25, 2003
RUNNING TIME:	112 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / Germany

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...

100

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Like many Altman movies, this is less a dramatic story to follow than an atmospheric environment to visit.

100

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It is sheer brilliance and testament to the vitality of an old master.

Slate David Edelstein

This is an absolutely miraculous movie.

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.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A funny valentine by an old master, woos us into the dance.

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?

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.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Director and dancers catch the audience up in a web of imagination.

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.

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.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

A wonderfully vivid and engaging theatrical experience.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Robert Altman takes an elegant, appealingly unemphatic look at the world of ballet.

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.

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.

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.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

A love letter to performers who put their egos and bodies on the line.

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.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Enjoyably lithe and droll yet somehow almost water-soluble; it seems to dissolve onscreen.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Empire Angie Errigo

Dramatic disappointment aside, there is a feel for the unglamorous, demanding lives of the real dancers.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

It's plotless. It fits no category -- "docudrama tone poem" probably comes closest.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Ramshackle one minute, pointlessly deliberate the next.

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.

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.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Lacks what could kindly be called coherence.

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.

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.

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.

Company, The Sony Pictures Classics

Company, The
Sony Pictures Classics