DVD Review: The Promotion - Funny and Often Profound Look at the Travails of Middle Management

by Tony Dayoub



Comedies usually appeal to me if they are absurdly funny - think Pee Wee's Big Adventure or There's Something About Mary - or extremely intelligent and witty -think Annie Hall or The Apartment. If both types happen to intersect, a rarity, then you really have a winner. Examples of this include The Big Lebowski or Some Like It Hot. Losers are movies that fail to be consistent in sustaining any of these stylistic aims. That's why unlike many of the critical world at large, I found Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder to be so weak. They were uneven in tone and failed in sustaining their humor over the length of the movie. That is also why I was caught by surprise when I viewed The Promotion, directed by Steven Conrad. This movie got an extremely limited theatrical release, and yet is consistently funny, honest, and often profound in its sympathetic view of middle management in the world of grocery stores.


Doug Stauber (Seann William Scott) is an assistant manager at Donaldson's, a grocery chain. His girlfriend, Jen (Jenna Fischer) works for a handsome doctor (Bobby Cannavale) who keeps calling him "Guy" every time they run into each other. Doug's manager, Scott (Fred Armisen) tells him he's a shoo-in for manager of the new Donaldson's opening nearby. So Doug convinces Jen they're ready to buy a house.

Then Richard Welhner (John C. Reilly) transfers in from a sister store in Quebec. Richard is likable, but a bit of a failure in life. The recovering addict is married to lovely Lori (Lili Taylor), who he met on a Christian mission. This after past lives in a biker gang, and other mysterious dead end endeavors hinted at by the gigantic KISS tattoo on his chest. Richard sees the new management position as his redemption. And the motivational tape he listens to on his walkman never lets him forget he should stay on the right track,despite his amazing inability to succeed at that pursuit.

The strong cast is one of the highlights of the film. Reilly (Boogie Nights) is his usual solid self, giving poor Richard a list of quirks without ever descending into self-parody. In one scene he tries to convince some higher ups that he was unaware of the joke when he saw a poster in the deli rewarding an employee "for cutting the cheese". He claims that in Canada the expression does not have a double meaning. It just means "cutting actual cheese." The usually clownish Scott (American Pie) is surprising here, playing the straight man to Reilly's antics. As Doug, he is a meek man who often follows instructions by a manager, which will be countermanded moments later if the manager suspects "The Board" may disagree with his solution. Doug submerges his day-to-day frustrations in pursuit of a goal that may not even be sufficient to satisfy his ambitions.

As Doug and Richard compete for the position, writer-director Conrad never sides with one man or the other. Both are decent human beings with aspirations beyond their pathetic jobs. Both are equally capable of pulling some vindictive stunts to keep the other man down. And Conrad, who is better known as a writer (The Weather Man, The Pursuit of Happyness), respects each man's stamina in their bureaucratic nightmare of a job. Conrad is a promising director, and I'm sure this movie will attract a growing audience in the home market, much like Office Space did.

As Conrad confirms in a promotional featurette, The Promotion is a paean to the little guys, the Dougs and the Richards, who show up to work every day despite a thankless, Kafkaesque career.

The Promotion is available on DVD today.

Still provided courtesy of Genius Products and The Weinstein Company.

Movie Review: Pineapple Express - Stoner Comedy is a Disappointing Mess

by Tony Dayoub



Pineapple Express is the latest comedy from the guys who hang under the Judd Apatow (Knocked Up) shingle. And it is the first to utterly disappoint, I'm sorry to say. The movie's a mess. It doesn't know whether it wants to be a stoner comedy, or a mismatched buddy caper, or a crime thriller. Yeah, I get it... indie director David Gordon Green (Snow Angels) is trying to demonstrate he can bust all genre limitations with this one. And maybe it works as his audition reel for joining the studio system. But as a movie, it fails big.


It starts so promisingly, too. Process server Dale Denton (Seth Rogen) is sleepwalking through his thin misguided life. He dresses up in phony disguises to serve his subpoenas. Occasionally, he stops to visit his girlfriend, Angie (Amber Heard), at her high school. Any reflections on the sorry state of his life are mostly smoked away with pot he purchases from Saul Silver (James Franco). Saul is so insulated by his paranoia at getting caught dealing, that he aches for a friend. Dale is nice enough and cool enough to fit that bill, so Saul shares his newest batch of weed known as "Pineapple Express" with him. This batch is so uniquely good that smoking it is a shame. According to Saul, "It's like killing a unicorn... with a bomb."

Dale leaves to serve Ted Jones (Gary Cole), supplier of said "Pineapple Express", with a subpoena. Arriving at the wrong time, he witnesses Jones and his cop girlfriend, Carol (Rosie Perez), murdering a rival dealer. Dale takes off in a hurry, but Jones and Carol identify a roach the pothead leaves behind as containing his batch of marijuana. When Dale goes back to Saul, and finds out he's the first to buy a sample of the "Pineapple", they both realize that it is only a matter of time before Jones tracks them down and eliminates them.

This is where it begins to fall apart. Scenes go on far too long as we hang with Dale and Saul in the woods while they consider what their next move is in their pot-induced reverie. Conversations that show the beginnings of a joke or two, go around in meaningless circles till they finally just die. Is it meant to represent the feeling of being high? Sure it is. But it doesn't make for good entertainment if a comedy fails to make you laugh as this one frequently does. Cheech and Chong's films, Friday, and even the Harold and Kumar comedies all knew how to wring laughs from the stoner premise. Part of it is their fearlessness when descending into total inanity.

But director Green is hoping to elevate this to another level. The film fails there also. Attempts at giving the two buddies some depth through their shared experience seem forced, and ultimately squelched by the filmmakers' own hesitancy to venture into emotional territory. When, at various repetitive times, the two leads are in desperate straits, they frequently profess affection to each other. But it's always done tongue in cheek, or defused by a well-timed quip.

So is it a parody? I don't know. It seems to be too serious for that. At times, presenting itself as a crime thriller, like when Dale and Saul are finally confronted by Jones and his goons, the movie gets pretty graphic and intense with its violence. If Green is going for a Landis-like twist on chase movies, a la The Blues Brothers or even Into the Night, it fails there also. Landis knew how to tie up loose ends, for instance. Dale has Angie and her parents (Nora Dunn and Ed Begley, Jr.), hide in a motel, revisits Angie twice (with parents nowhere to be seen), only to never be heard from again before the movie concludes. I doubt that Dunn and Begley deigned to do this movie only to appear in one short, throwaway scene. I suspect, instead, that there are large chunks of this film on the cutting room floor.

This film is about as disjointed a one as I've seen in some time. It's like they threw everything at it but the kitchen sink, and hoped some of it would stick. Not silly enough to elicit laughs, not deep enough to explore the two stoner-buds' friendship, and not tight enough to serve as a thriller of any sort, Pineapple Express isn't even worthy to watch while high. So save yourself some time, money, and laugh-enhancing medication and just skip it.