The Promotion: Critic Reviews

The Promotion edges toward some pretty bleak stuff. Then it steps back and laughs, like an office slacker.

Think of it as a polite, tightly muzzled Clerks.

The portrayal of employment in America is too close for comfort. Or comedy...Not the stuff of lighthearted summer comedy.

There's still a lot to like here, but ultimately the movie reflects its hapless hero a little too well. While we're constantly rooting for it to succeed, the finish line seems forever out of reach.

It's one of those off-balance movies that seems searching for the right tone.

The Promotion may not be much, and you get to know that supermarket uncomfortably well by the end of the 85 minutes. But as I say: He's an interesting writer.

Isn't as broad as its premise might suggest.

The Promotion uses the structure of a workplace comedy to pose gentle moral and ethical questions about treating people right (or wrong), about honor and ambition, truth-telling and back-stabbing.

As bad as a severe case of the Mondays.

As a subtle expression of masculine angst, it's the timid flipside of Fight Club. As a gentle critique of the American dream's descent into empty consumerism, it's a less cutesy, less feminist Little Miss Sunshine.

At last, we have a completely and profoundly American movie with all the classical skills of timing, editing and character development that we associate nostalgically with some Hollywood golden age.

the entire enterprise has fallen short of its muddled ambitions.

Easily the worst movie I've seen so far this year.

The Promotion has more work-life truth in it than a month of The Office or Dilbert.

The Promotion works as a comedy because, in the depths of our dark hearts, we enjoy seeing the woes that beset our comic antagonists.

A nice little comedy about what it takes to climb the corporate ladder and the toll such actions take on the psyche of a decent individual.

Add watching The Promotion to the Geneva Conventions' list of humanitarian abuses.

A bit Alexander Payne social satire, a bit Mike Judge's "Office Space," "The Promotion" keeps the laughter mostly low-key while addressing deflating truths about occupational angst -writer/director Steve Conrad's sturdy thematic stock-in-trade.

Sort of a Dilbert riff, only lower on the food chain.

The Promotion does sacrifice some comedy in its attempt at depth.

By taking the time to make that connection with the audience, The Promotion ensures we'll forgive these guys anything -- and laugh along with them -- in their quest to advance their lots.

...an odd yet compelling comedy...