The Promotion

I had an interesting feeling watching The Promotion. How to describe it? Not pleasure, not dislike, more like apathy. That’s the problem: The Promotion is a pleasant and genial comedy that should be bitter and unpredictable. There’s a really memorable movie trapped inside this innocuous one. Doug (Seann William Scott) is an assistant manager at a grocery store struggling to move up in the world. When a managerial position at a new grocery store is announced, he looks like a sure thing for promotion until Richard (John C. Reilly), an ambitious French-Canadian (with an appalling fake accent), who’s new at the store, also applies for the job. Doug and Richard are basically nice guys who try to do the right thing, and that hurts the film. This type of comedy of manners requires tension and the uneasy feeling that the characters could at any moment abandon morality and decency. That’s not the case — even when Doug and Richard are at their worst, it doesn’t feel like much is at stake. Maybe it’s a problem with Scott and Reilly (whose performances are blandly likable), or perhaps the strangely upbeat voiceover narration and light-hearted musical score set the wrong tone. The Promotion isn’t a bad film, it’s just one that should be a lot funnier than it is. The DVD has the standard extras: commentary, deleted scenes, bloopers, and a generic "making-of” documentary, and some "promotional webisodes,” which are pretty mundane.