The Promotion

With Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly in the leads one would be forgiven for thinking that The Promotion is yet another formulaic, middle-of-the road  Hollywood comedy (how John C. Reilly has become one of the leading names in this area is mystery!!). It is however a surprisingly under-stated number with a dead-pan style that we are more familiar with from the independent sector.

Writer-director Steven Conrad has crafted a comedy with heart and wit and with a nice feel for incidental restrained humour rather than the usual toilet jokes and over-the-top stunts that typify American studio comedies. Scott plays Doug, the assistant manager of a Chicago supermarket who’s hoping to impress his wife (Jenna Fischer, who played Reilly’s wife in the 2007 Johnny Cash spoof Walk Hard ) by getting the job of manager at a new store that is opening. He’s looking like a “shoo-in” until Richard (John C. Reilly) is transferred from a sister store in Canada. Richard is also trying to impress his wife (Lili Taylor) that he can kick goals and the two men both need to get this promotion to maintain their faltering self-esteem.

Whereas the standard mainstream comedic approach would be to track the two men in an escalating dog-eat-dog rivalry that would culminate in scenes of destruction and mayhem, Conrad keeps everything credible mundane, injecting the everyday with dry humour and amusing running gags such an obese employee who constantly samples products and puts them back on the shelf and the banjo-playing gay neighbour who is only separated from Doug and Jessica by the paper-thin walls of their flat.

Both Scott and Reilly plau likeable characters and the film largely manages to keep that quality throughout although a joke about a salsa sauce is a lamentable mis-judgement. If there is one other notable flaw in the film it is that insufficient screen-time is given to Richard’s back-sliding and his wife leaving him (the DVD extras seem to suggest that this material, for one reason or another, got left on the cutting-room floor). Even so, The Promotion is a film that surprises pleasantly.

 

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