Rating: 
Summary: Brief review
Review: Apparently, Robert Altman is only interested in watching his actors move: during ballet performances, ballet practice -- even outside of the ballet company (i.e. the relationship between a ballet dancer and a chef is more action-oriented than talky). There's very little talking and very, very little character development, purposely, sadly. (You know as much about the characters here as you know about the people performing in a ballet play.) The Company is really a silent film with a few droplets of dialogue -- a joke if you ask me. Unfortunately, I was never engaged by the performances (the first one came close, though). Fans of ballet should get something out of it, though.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic Dancing!!!
Review: As a professional Ballet dancer with a well known company myself i was curious to see this movie, i loved it, the dancing was amazing and Neve Campbell is an extremely talented dancer who surprised me greatly. Ballet is beautiful and challenging both mentally and physically and anyone who is interested in dancing will love this movie and be able to get a good idea of the physical endurance it takes to be a ballet dancer. Enjoy!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Understated but very effective
Review: At first glance this movie is a strange beast. Not quite drama, not documentary, not even docudrama. Maybe it can best be described as a series of slightly fictionalized vignettes that follows a few months in a real-world ballet company. Despite the lack of plot, high drama, character development, or other things we usually expect from movies, The Company never fails to be fascinating in its portrayal of the lives of the dancers and the inner-workings of their profession.The filmmaker's restrained approach gave the movie a sense of realness absent in conventional dramas, yet doesn't dilute it's power. After all, the events depicted really happened, and the dancers on screen are dancers in real life. The movie makes its points with small, finely-observed moments that says much. For example, when a star dancer snap her Achilles Tendon, she was quickly replaced. As she was carried off stage it seemed that's the last we will see of her since that injury effectively ends her career. But later at a public performance we see her limping to the side of the stage to watch her replacement dancing in her role. The reasons for these people's tremendous dedication were never explicitly articulated in the movie. Some find this as a lack of depth. But I feel words are not necessary, nor adequate, to illustrate it. Simply take a look at the power and the grace the dancers display on stage, one would understand their passion and sacrifice. As a bonus, the DVD has a worthwhile commentary track, in which Altman and Campell discuss the the actual Joffrey company and its dancers in relation to the movie. Interesting and informative.
Rating:
Summary: Dance fans everywhere will LOVE this. I certainly did!
Review: Directed by Robert Altman, this film is about a year in the life of the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, which is the true star of the film. It also stars Neve Campbell, who wrote and produced it as well, and it was surely an act of love on her part. Even though she was originally trained as a dancer, she still had to train for three months, seven hours a day before even beginning to train with the company, which took another few months before shooting began. She is a wonderful dancer and The Company brings this all out. This is not a film about one person though. And it is not a film with lots of interlocking stories. Basically, it is a film about the creative process itself, and how an idea gets turned into an elaborate work of art. It's hard to get the feel of this onto the screen. But Mr. Altman is a master in making sure it all come together. It takes more than hard work to be a member of the company. It takes talent, dedication and pain and there are a few shots of the dancers' feet that made my own corns and calluses seem like nothing. Malcolm McDowell is cast as the artistic director and he is terrific. He's eccentric and moody and wonderfully creative as he has an intuitive understanding of how a new ballet will all come together in performance. Most of the dancing shows the new and experimental although there is no doubt that the company is classically trained. There are a few small stories, but all of them just add to understanding of the company as a whole. For example, there is a romance between Neve Campbell and James Franco, cast as a young chef. This story is basically used to underscore the demanding life of the ballerina, which forces her to also work as a waitress in order to support herself. Then there is a poignant scene where a dancer snaps an Achilles tendon during rehearsal. Everyone knows that this means she will never dance again. But the show must go on. During the Grande Finale performance itself, one of the dancers is injured and another dancer takes her place in such a way that the performance seems seamless. All the dancing bore the touch of Robert Desrosiers and Lar Lubovitich, two master choreographers who also had roles in the film. I must also give a standing ovation to the cinematographers who shot this film with multiple cameras and high definition video. I know I love watching dancers on the stage. But the kind of angles and close-ups that are possible in film transform the experience of watching dance into an almost participatory experience. There are good extras on the DVD, including interviews and some extended dance performances. I just couldn't stop watching and absorbing all the backstage lore. This is a wonderful film and I give it one of my highest recommendations - especially for dance fans everywhere.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable Altman Slice of Life
Review: First of all, this is not a plotted movie about the life of a dancer, although it pivots around a central character named Ry (Neve Campbell), a rising dancer with the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago. Rather, what Altman attempts to do is to convey a dancer's milieu--the physical pressures, the competitiveness, and the sheer joy of dancing. The dancing sequences are spectacular--Altman appreciates and savors each of them, without doing any heavily MTV-esque editing. If you like Robert Altman, odds are good you will enjoy this film, although it is lighter on character development than much of his other work. If you are a serious fan of dance, you will enjoy this film for the attention it pays to the beauty of the art form. If you want a plot, particularly a standard love affair between Ry and her chef beau (James Franco), look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: For ballet fans, the best ballet movie ever made.
Review: For the ballet fan, this is a brilliant movie. It's likely the first ballet movie to give the viewer an authentic sense of what ballet is really like, behind the scenes, day-by-day, in a performing company. In this case, the company is the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, whose dancers participated in the picture. The director is Robert Altman, and the movie is magnificently produced, filmed, and performed. The Joffrey emerges from the film looking like the best ballet company in the world and gains from it the best of all possible advertisements. Neve Campbell, the film's star, had been a professional dancer and had trained at Canada's National School of Ballet from age 9 (she started dancing at age 6). She gave up dancing because a long history of injuries (about 40, in all) intersected with an increasing number of acting opportunities. When she was cast in "Party of Five" at age 20, the acting took over her career. Her contributions to the picture are staggering to contemplate. The seven-year project that it represents was Campbell's dream. Briefly (and over-simplified), she conceived the idea, sold it, co-wrote the story with Barbara Turner, and nursed the project through an intensive final three-year gestation period, where she and Turner commuted to Chicago to spend time with the Joffrey observing classes, rehearsals, and performances and getting to know the dancers. Then Turner and Campbell persuaded Altman to direct the film, after which Campbell spent 4 1/2 months of 8 1/2-hour days dancing herself back into performing shape and another 1 1/2 months of 8 1/2-hour days dancing with the Joffrey prior to the start of shooting. Three days before she was to join the company, she broke a rib. She danced through the month-and-a-half with the Joffrey and the entire filming with that injury. She performed not only as the movie's dramatic but also as its ballet star. She did all of her own dance scenes and also served as co-producer. Her acting and her dancing in "The Company" are both superb. The dance sequences are sensationally good and sensationally well filmed. Perhaps the best of a most memorable lot is Campbell's and partner Domingo Rubio's performance of "My Funny Valentine," a pas de deux ballet, in an outdoor Chicago venue as a summer storm rolls in, lending its thunder, lightning, wind, and rain accompaniment to the on-stage trio and the Lar Lubovitch choreography. This is the same ballet that American Ballet Theatre has performed with Sandra Brown and Julie Kent dancing Campbell's role. Lubovitch originally made the ballet on Sandra Brown. Indeed, a very brief rehearsal-tape clip of ABT's Sandra Brown and Marcelo Gomes is shown being watched by Joffrey personnel and the choreographer as they prepare the ballet for performance. The audience for the movie may be narrow because the picture is all about ballet, a ballet company, and the way those associated with that company lead their lives; in many cases in a state of near-poverty, which is tolerable in exchange for the opportunity to dance (Campbell's character has a second job as a waitress to help pay the rent). "The Company" has the flavor of a documentary, albeit a considerably enhanced one, because its focus on dance, ballet culture, and the ambience of dancers' lives does not permit an elaborate problem-solution or beginning-middle-end story line. Think Frederick Wiseman (a la his ABT documentary) with dialog and a near-heroine. Campbell did not want this movie to be the standard corps-to-stardom ballet melodrama, and she did not want it to be about her. While it is clear that she is one of the film's principal interests, she pretty successfully blends into the body of the company, which really is the film's principal interest. For fans of ballet, it is the best ballet movie ever made. There is nothing phony or artificial or sentimental about it. The message is simple and direct: This is the way it is in the ballet world. And it is beautifully cast and wonderfully acted in those segments where there is the opportunity for acting. Malcolm McDowell, as the company's artistic director, is splendid. James Franco, as Campbell's love interest of the moment, is as fully beautiful a person as she. And Campbell is heroic in any dimension one cares to name. A single measure of that: When the film concluded its shooting, Gerald Arpino, the real-life artistic director of the Joffrey Ballet, asked Campbell to join the real-life company.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful intermeshing of different aesthetics
Review: I forgot my hearing aids, so often couldn't follow the plot. Not important. Only the ballets mattered. The Blue Snake dance effectively intermingled Asian musical elements, costumes, masks, body movements with classical western ballet. I could see Indonesian and Tibetian images, then European forms. Marvelous. Just what the modern world calls for.
Rating: 
Summary: Memorable only for the ballet dancing
Review: I have a love/hate relationship with director Robert Altman's films. I loved The Player, a viciously funny insider's look at the business of Hollywood, but I hated last year's Gosford Park, which I felt was a muddled mess of a film, without plot or coherence (and in which it was even difficult to figure out what the characters were saying). Surprisingly to myself, I give The Company a middle-of-the-road overall rating: the dancing is great, but the rest of the film is nothing special. If you are a ballet fan, or even mildly interested in seeing some top-notch ballet, then The Company is recommended. Nearly half the film shows dancing, both in rehearsal and in performance. The filmed performances provide a perspective that you cannot get by watching ballet from an auditorium seat, since the camera is able to roam up close to and among the dancers. The effect at times is quite magical and mesmerizing. However, the storyline is nothing new or insightful. Yes, there is a major contrast between the lives the ballet dancers live on stage, when they are realizing their dreams, and the rote, menial day jobs they take to put food on the table (didn't Flashdance cover this same ground?). Another major focus of the film is the head of the ballet company, played by Malcolm McDowell (who's somewhat miscast, as his English accent comes through when he's supposed to be portraying an Italian-American). We get to see the creative process at work in many scenes with McDowell interacting with other members of the company, but ground, too, has been trod many times before (contrast this with the film Adaptation, which showed a truly unique and fresh look at the challenge of creating art). Neve Campbell does a very credible job in her role as one of the better up-and-coming ballerinas in the company. Her dancing was very expressive, and while I wasn't checking to see if she was able to go "en pointe" like the professionals (her dances probably were carefully edited), it all came across in the final product as very seamless.
Rating:
Summary: horrible, boring movie, with no plot whatsoever.
Review: I know Neve fought for years to get this movie made and I think it succeeds brilliantly. Altman brought just the right touch to the ephemeral world of dance as a career. This is a brave, touching, mature film; it has stayed with me in a way most movies don't. I think the lessons within apply to any arts career. I couldn't recommend this movie more highly!
Rating:
Summary: Why not just make a documentary?
Review: I know other people have complained that the plot of this movie was light, but it was a little more than light. In the middle of the third or fourth beautifully filmed dance scene, I wondered why they hadn't just gone and made a documentary, since the most tedious parts of the movie - Neve Campbell being followed by the beautiful chef who becomes her boyfriend - were the ones that wouldn't have been caught in a documentary. Everything else about this movie that was interesting - the dynamic between choreographer and dancer, the strained living conditions of the dancers, the brutally competitive environment and general physical strain of dancing - could easily have come across in a documentary about the Joffrey ballet. And we wouldn't get the occasionally stilted acting from the ballet dancers, or the feeling that the atmosphere of this movie is just right but the narrative details are a bit phony. Altman movies have traditionally had a documentary feel about them, like the camera just walked into a group of characters and started filming, but the screenplays are always deeply involved with the stories of the people, and there are always a number of narrative arcs that proceed from beginning to end in some satisfying way. Here we have nothing - just something about Campbell's boyfriend cheating on her, and then her finding someone else. You can convey the rambling, episodic quality in a dancer's life, I think, while still having some of the satisfactions that a story provides. Here they've just decided to barely bother with the second one. Wisps of fascinating stories appear here and there - the well-connected young dancer constantly pressing Antonelli for an assignment, for example - but not enough time is spent to make any of it engaging, and they finally seem thrown in just to make this seem like a narrative movie instead of what it is, a documentary with some halfhearted flourishes. I'm a huge fan of Altman - with the number of great movies he's made, I think he's joining a pantheon of American directors that includes John Ford and not many others - but this strikes me very worth seeing but disappointing as a film.
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