Good movie... but ridiculous.

The Company Men is a good movie - great performances, strong writing, strong directing, etc... but it does push the bounds of reality to the near extreme.

Losing a job is bad for anyone regardless of your income class. You live according to your means and when your means are lost, your life loses it's crutches and comes crashing down. But the rate in which Bobby Walker's (Ben Affleck) life goes into distress is unbelievable.

Most stable households put savings aside and one would assume that the bigger the income, the bigger the savings. He likely had stock options, definitely had a mortgage, and even had his wife working as a nurse after he was fired. It is completely implausible that so shortly after the end of his severance, they were forced to sell their house (in a crashed economy and real estate market) and that Bobby had to work for his brother-in-law as a carpenter. I mean, I understand the message, but come on... laying it on a little thick?

My mother was part of the big downsizing period of the early-90's and took years to recover, all while raising 3 children as a single parent in the suburbs. Did we have to make cuts? Yes. Did we have to sell our house? Definitely not. John Wells, the writer and director, is certainly not writing from experience. The whole situation, and the plight of the characters, would be more believable if they were earning middle-class income, and lived more paycheque-to-paycheque.

The funniest part is that this movie spent $15 million and earned $4.37 mil at the box office. So even with all the morals and messages, they spent millions on their solid cast and locations, when they could have spent a fraction and got the same reviews/acclaim. Yikes.