The Promotion is such an insightfully hilarious and beautifully bittersweet movie about the American and human spirits that I wish Steven Conrad had always been directing his scripts. Conrad previously wrote The Weather Man and The Pursuit of Happyness, both of which can be felt here as less evolved ancestors; structurally they’re quite the same, while The Promotion shares some of the offbeat tone of Weather Man and a lot of the heart of Happyness. But there’s a story in The Promotion that is far more universal, relatable and familiar, which makes this one much, much funnier and much, much more sympathetic.
And certainly Conrad’s ability to balance the sweet and the salty, as a director, is responsible for most of the film’s success. One scene in particular exemplifies the movie best: John C. Reilly, as the new-to-Chicago “Richard”, sits opposite four supermarket executives, interviewing for a promotion to be a full-on store manager, and he’s just had to defend how his Canadian-ness caused him to miss an employee prank. Conrad keeps a close-up shot on Reilly as the actor fluctuates expressions that communicate, non-verbally, a plea of innocence, then ignorance, then stupidity, then insanity, then doubt, then back to innocence again. The combination of comedy and pathos that comes out of this lengthy close-up and perfectly tuned performance, which is broken up by a couple reversals to the executives and which is permitted more time and attention than most films nowadays allow any single moment, is the most brilliantly thoughtful thing I’ve seen done in this kind of movie in a very long time.
And there are other scenes that are close. That made it difficult for me to tell if my eyes were tearing from laughter or from sadness. The last time I really felt that way may have been as long ago as 1987, when the king of all sad-com movies, Planes, Trains & Automobiles, was released. Since then, there have been plenty of melancholic comedies, which are often almost more sentimental or even depressing than funny. But The Promotion is actually, as I said, hilarious. And in a way that more strongly contrasts with the pathos, thereby amplifying each emotion to more affecting levels.
Opposite Reilly, The Promotion stars Seann William Scott, as “Doug”, an assistant manager at a problematic branch of the “Donaldson’s” supermarket chain. He’s considered a shoo-in for the full-on store-manager position at a new branch of Donaldson’s being built nearby, and he even puts a down payment on a house for him and his wife (Jenna Fischer). But then Richard waltzes into town with his Scottish wife (Lily Taylor, who pulls off the accent well enough, but who probably didn’t need to do an accent in the first place) and their daughter, transferring in from a Canadian sister-chain as a more-experienced, more-qualified candidate for the promotion, thereby threatening Doug’s chances for the job.
The two assistant managers become very competitive and there’s a great deal of spite and malice that ensues, enough that I kept expecting to hear The Who’s “A Quick One, While He’s Away” (a la the malice montage in Rushmore) played on repeat as the film’s score. Yet in The Promotion, with each new vengeful trick and wrongfully encouraged blunder, we are led to feel bad for the victim as much as good for the offender. Though Doug is technically the protagonist and Richard the antagonist, there is a fine line drawn so that sometimes we like Richard and dislike Doug, and vice versa. I could see where some viewers would simply dislike everyone and consider this another inaccessible, misanthropic comedy with nobody to care about, but in many ways it’s more complex than that. I still can’t decide who I liked better, or if I even liked either at all, but I definitely sympathized with both.
As far as The Promotion being inaccessible, I guess it is possible. Already, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter have terribly panned the movie (I feel like they saw a different movie) and Conrad addressed his SXSW premiere audience as though the movie wasn’t being viewed as commercial in the least (I thought he was just trying to play the Juno game). But other than rich kids, most Americans, I figure, have had some kind of retail or grocery type job that is comparable to working at Donaldson’s. Or even an office job that somewhat coincided. I saw past bosses, higher-ups, employees, co-workers and myself in the different characters on screen. It’s not much different from something like Office Space or The Office; it’s just set in a supermarket.
And if the audience at the SXSW premiere is any indication of how people typically will respond to this movie, then those Variety and Hollywood Reporter reviews are inaccurate and worthless. The crowd was roaring with laughter, cheering, sighing, shouting, becoming emotionally involved, and they all but uniformly gave Jason Bateman a standing ovation when he appeared on screen for his teeny tiny cameo. It was probably the very antithesis to what I’d consider a bored or unamused audience. And The Promotion is therefore certainly the very antithesis of an unfunny movie.
Please, please, please, if you can, go see it when it comes out in limited release (NY and LA) June 6th.
