For all its satisfying moments, In Good Company still puts a Hollywood sheen on personal failure.

Unemployment is never grungy during In Good Company, though it is a movie about the brutal backhands delivered by corporate America.

Parenthood is never defeating, though it is also a movie about chaotic family life.

Despite the veneer, In Good Company warms and satisfies because Paul Weitz is a writer with near-perfect pitch. He finds the heart in the slacker, and the slacker in the executive. As a director, his timing is generous and moving. He cares what pictures his characters hang on their walls, and what they carry out the door when they've just been fired.

Add in welcome actors like Dennis Quaid, aging gracefully, and Topher Grace, maturing quickly, and you have In Good Company, not as brilliant as Wemtz's About a Boy, but a winning cure for the holiday hangover.

Quaid plays Dan Foreman, advertising sales manager for a Sports Illustrated knockoff. He's a good salesman, a decent boss and kind enough to feign excitement when his wife (Marg Helgenberger) tells him he'll be a father again at age 52.

Grace is Carter Duryea, half Foreman's age, promoted from another branch of the conglomerate to be the new hard-nosed boss. "Selling cell phones, selling magazine ads, it's all the same crap," says the callow youth.

He would seem harmless except that he keeps firing people.