The Promotion
Stars Seann William Scott
Director Steven Conrad
** (out of five)
I wanted to like this movie. Its concept is solid: Two losers duke it out over a promotion from assistant manager to manager of a Chicago grocery store chain only losers work at.
It�s got a winning cast: Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly costar; Jenna Fischer and Lili Taylor play their wives; Fred Armisen, Gil Bellows and Jason Bateman play mealy corporate types.
Even more promising, it�s the directorial debut of Steven Conrad, who wrote The Weather Man (Nicolas Cage�s finest film in eons) and The Pursuit Of Happyness, movies that put a human face on the working stiff.
So how did Conrad turn this surefire indie hit into an unsure mess?
For starters, Reilly�s character has just moved down from Quebec, but I dare you to find anything Canadian about him.
Taylor is, for no good reason, playing someone from Scotland. Want to hear Taylor do a distracting Scottish accent? Me neither.
But what really kills this comedy of one-upmanship is Conrad�s downer need to put a human face on everything. Scott�s character wants to buy his saintly wife a house.
Reilly wants to prove to his wife he won�t relapse into addiction. Motivations this blandly sympathetic file all the edges off the film.
And whenever someone starts to do something outrageous � like tell a lie or rat out another character � Conrad cheats us out of the consequences by having them change their minds or be forgiven.
The pacing is unforgivably slack. Scenes linger while characters just stare at each other. Running jokes never get off the ground.
Reilly has a few good moments, like tap dancing alone in the frozen food aisle.
Scott just looks uncomfortable, and so does everyone else.
See Also
