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The Promotion

Mina Hochberg

2:18 PM EDT, June 5, 2008

"The Promotion" falls into that wobbly category of comedies that are uncomfortably earnest, leaving you in a constantly stunted state of wondering whether the scene you just watched was supposed to be funny or serious.

Doug (Seann William Scott) and Richard (John C. Reilly) are assistant managers at a Chicago supermarket, duking it out for the position of manager at a branch opening nearby. Doug has worked at the supermarket for a long time, in supermarket-years. He's a diligent employee and takes customer comments to heart. Richard is a new hire from Canada whose self-deprecating niceness at first seems to threaten Doug's chance at ascending the chain-store hierarchy.

If only this could have been "The Office" of supermarkets, a depressingly realistic, droll look at the boring minutia of inter-aisle politics. There is a bit of this, like when Doug gets jealous after the Pepsi guy asks Richard, not him, to help arrange cans for display. But for the most part, rather than capitalize on the funny antics of competitors trying to one-up each other, the film is a weirdly sober exploration of Doug's yearning for advancement. As it turns out, Richard is hardly in the same playing field as Doug. He's clueless about job politics, and he thinks being nice is enough to get him ahead.

Since the playing field isn't even, the emphasis shifts to Doug's moral qualms about kicking a social gimp while he's already down, which ends up being a humdrum emphasis for this comedy. Scott and Reilly have so much to offer as comedic actors, but the script doesn't give these funnymen very much material to work with. They seem constrained by the script. Even Reilly, who plays a great straight man, couldn't have squeezed more humor out of some of his lines if he'd gotten a hundred more takes. The film has its moments, often thanks to Reilly's perfect comedy timing, but in the end it's understocked with laughs.