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THE PROMOTION
Written & Directed by Steve Conrad
Produced by Jessika Goyer, Steven A. Jones
Director of Photography Lawrence Sher
Edited by Tim Streeto
Music by Alex Wurman
Released by Dimension Films/Third Rail
USA. 85 min. Rated R
With Seann William Scott, John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer, Lili Taylor, Bobby Cannavale & Fred Armisen

Intended as a comedy of mediocrity – a proud American genre based on a reverence for mundane subject matter, deadpan delivery, and the absurdity of everyday life – The Promotion turns out to be as boring and forgettable as the world it tries to mock. This bland-to-the-bone tale of humble middle-class aspirations is artistically moot, comedically puny, and about as satisfying as a dinner at T.G.I. Friday’s.

Assistant managers Doug (Seann William Scott) and Richard (John C. Reilly) are remarkably ordinary men working at a remarkably generic grocery chain in Chicago. Sporting button-down short-sleeve shirts and sycophantic smiles, they seem content to guard the parking lot from teenage hooligans and to eat their packed lunches in a dreary break room. But when the opening of a new branch offers only one of them a position as a general manager, these good-natured doofs find a competitive spirit they never knew they had.

Like everything in this lethargic comedy, even their nastiest Machiavellian skirmishes are dull and uninspired. With the moralizing nuance of PBS children’s programming, every instance of rivalry is almost immediately checked by their humility and good intentions. Writer/director Steve Conrad eagerly reminds us that these guys are motivated not by greed but a spruced up American version of survival, which involves more than putting food on a table, but on a table in a nice house, in front a wife who respects you for getting that promotion.

To credit the film with a few good moves, the character’s delicate sensibilities do make for some chuckles, especially when it comes to Richard. With an inexplicably fierce, though somewhat capricious Canadian accent, this sweet Quebecois family man has an unlikely past of drug abuse and motorcycle gangs. But having traded the Grateful Dead for a self-help tape and his raunchy lifestyle for a wholesome Scottish wife (Lili Taylor, her accent even more ridiculous than Reilly’s), Richard’s humble desires for grocery store glory are all the more entertaining.

Except for a few unexpected moments of slapstick (like when an ambiguously ethnic customer runs around slapping Doug for not honoring coupons) this comedy generally remains on a low simmer. Sometimes, this pace is lovely and refreshing. When Richard, wearing tap dancing shoes, clashes with Doug in the store parking lot and wrestles to the rhythmic clap of his footwear, the tangled men seem reminiscent of sad French mimes, and the scene is almost beautiful. Otherwise, The Promotion has the appeal of elevator music, or a lazy yawn. Yana Litovsky
June 6, 2008