The Promotion Reviews

The directorial debut of Pursuit of Happyness writer Steve Conrad, The Promotion carries a deadpan corporate-absurd whiff of Office Space but never quite scans.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4

Screenwriter Steve Conrad's (The Pursuit of Happyness) directorial debut is too strait-laced for the Knocked Up set and too offensive for the Will Smith crowd.

Full Review | Original Score: C+

The strangely paced drama/comedy never finds much of a groove. Elements of conventional madcap comedy butt against more indie-ready scenes of relationship dysfunction, and the end result is more frustrating than interesting.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Reilly and Scott richly mine their characters, alternately confiding in and undermining each other. Their vulnerability and yearning for the good life is a quiet but powerful statement that will stay with you long after the closing credits.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

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

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

[Director] Conrad seems to have used whatever clout he got from The Pursuit of Happyness to fund something personal and sincere -- a story that's ultimately about victories of character and suppressing your worst impulses.

Full Review | Original Score: B-

As bad as a severe case of the Mondays.

Full Review | Original Score: D

The acting, not Steve Conrad's bland writing and uneven pacing, drives this low-key, mildly amusing, occasionally insightful workplace satire.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10

Total and forgettable and unforgivable blandness.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

The Promotion skates out onto that thin ice of comedic subtlety. Like its characters, it's not terribly successful, but it's an admirable effort all the same.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

A nasty-hearted little film, and in absolutely the worst way for a film to be nasty: it is absolutely convinced of its own warm spirit.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

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

Full Review

Director Steve Conrad probably counts on the natural likability of Scott and Reilly to make this comedy go down a little easier, but it doesn't always do the trick.

Full Review | Original Score: C

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5

So laid-back that it barely registers, despite starring two guys who haven't exactly been shrinking violets in previous outings.

Full Review | Original Score: C

better than the usual in so many ways

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5

"The Promotion" needs some career counseling to figure out just what it really wants to be.

Full Review | Original Score: C

A confident and clever character study about the commonality of dreams from the boardroom to the bag boy.

Full Review

This notable, Chicago-filmed comedy was inspired by the true events of director Steve Conrad seeing a store employee at a Chicago chain armed only with a yellow courtesy vest break up some unruly loiterers in the parking lot.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5