The Promotion Reviews
Some really funny parts in this. Just something missing about it
Weird little quasi-morality tale with an underdeveloped plot. Light on laughs, mostly a waste of time in spite of its charming cast.
Given the storyline, I was expecting a comedy, but sadly it's not. The tone of the movie is flat and serious which for me resulted in a rather dull experience. Frankly, the every day rivalries of the two supermarket employees are just not interesting enough to keep the viewer entertained when played straight. On the positive side, it does promote the virtues of fair play winning through adversity, but it is so melancholy you probably won't care about that.
Horrible storyline and not horrible in a funny way.
The film will mostly be lost on those not familiar with the toils of working in the world of retail but those that are will totally get it.
Deux assistants-gérants d'une épicerie convoitent un nouveau poste de gérant. Personnellement, je n'aurais engagé aucun des deux, tellement ils manquaient de leadership, d'initiative et de rigueur.
Seann William Scott is a...genius? Maybe best known for Stifler in American Pie, Scott is the driving force behind two of my favorite indie movies...Goon and Balls Out: Gary the tennis coach. He brings the same awkwardness to this role as an assistant grocery store manager that he brought to those roles, but overall the movie is just an average comedy. I had not even heard of this so I was shocked that it was 2008. It was on tv the other day so I recorded it for when I was bored. I actually stayed up way later than expected to finish it, which could be a testament that it's at least interesting if not entertaining. I credit most of that to Scott's odd store manager character. He's just fun to watch and I actually wanted to see how things turned out for him. And for such an oddball comedy of sorts, it's quite a cast. Jenna Fischer is his lovely wife. O'Reilly plays opposite Scott. Fred Armisen is in there, as is Bobby Cannavale. And the guy playing the big shot is actually a good cast as well. Anyway, I watched on Comedy Central so I missed out on a lot of the profanity. Oddly enough, maybe that helped the movie. Instead of being just another lazy, potty-mouthed comedy, I saw the characters. And I thought they were pretty decent and carried the movie to an average status.
This was an incredibly surprisingly good film - I say incredibly surprisingly, because there is a typical trope in american comedies - two guys competing for a role/job/something, escalation and friendly rivlary turns into fierce chaos. This was not that kind of film, and that's what's wonderful about it - it's more inspired by "the pursuit of happyness" than other comedy films of it's ilk. In fact, it's not really correct to call it a comedy - but not drama either. Instead, you get a nice snippet of two guy's lives, both of whom are essentially nice, have some conflict but ultimately are equally good people, and more or less stay that way. It was a pleasant surprise, and slightly heartfelt.