The Central Intelligence Agency has a reputation of failure in the eyes of many observers. The abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 is notable in that regard. Who would imagine that such a sorry episode would be the subject of comedy? In Company Man, directors Peter Askin and Douglas McGrath try mightily to find a way to ridicule the CIA, but end up with a film that is even more ridiculous. Allen Quimp (played by Douglas McGrath), an utter fool who is teaching grammar to high schoolers in Greenwich, Connecticut, during 1959, is the center of the story. His wife Daisy (played by Sigourney Weaver) is bored with him, unimpressed with his book on the threat to Western civilization posed by the decline of the use of grammatical English, and his relatives agree that he must shape up. His father-in-law begins to arrange interviews with various big corporations when Quimp comes up with the idea that he is secretly a member of the CIA, aka The Company. His wife broadcasts the “secret” to relatives and friends, who are indeed impressed that he is a Company man. Rudolph Petrov, a visiting Russian ballet dancer, presumably Rudolph Nureyev (played by Ryan Phillippe), also believing that he is a CIA agent, begs him to arrange a defection. Then a real CIA agent comes knocking, telling Quimp that it is a crime to pose as a CIA agent. However, the CIA higher-ups agree to hire Quimp in order to take credit for the defection of the Russian and also because he is such a simpleton that nobody would believe him to work for the CIA — a perfect cover. He is sent to Cuba, where the principal operative (played by Woody Allen) is oblivious of the impending revolution because he wants a new posting and is not paying attention as pickets outside his window clearly call for an end to Batista’s rule. Quimp annoys everyone by correcting their English grammar, and tries to assist blustering CIA agent Crocker Johnson (played by John Turturro), who “masterminds” the Bay of Pigs fiasco. As the film ends, Quimp is sent to an even more obscure posting — Vietnam. We presumably are to draw the conclusion from the film that bungling in Vietnam was due to CIA idiots, but alas the Vietnam syndrome is still alive and well, not yet a topic for comedy; for that matter, neither is the Bay of Pigs disaster. Many lines are indeed hilarious, especially when Quimp tries to correct the grammar of CIA agent Fry (played by Denis Leary), whose informative oral briefing is verbally shredded, sentence by sentence, and thus makes no dent on Quimp’s dingbat brain. But the plot’s implausibility is excessive. The comedy deals with subjects that are unfamiliar and thus of not much interest to most youthful filmviewers, while the effort to lampoon the CIA falls flat among those who know what the story purports to be about. MH