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'The Promotion'

Rating:

BY RAFER GUZMÁN | rafer.guzman@newsday.com

June 6, 2008

PLOT: Two supermarket employees wage a comedic battle for a managerial post. (R)

CAST: John C. Reilly, Seann William Scott, Jenna Fischer, Lili Taylor

LENGTH: 85 minutes

PLAYING AT: AMC Empire 25 and Angelika Film Center, Manhattan

BOTTOM LINE: With Reilly on board, there's potential here for zany workplace mayhem and even some pointed commentary, but writer-director Steve Conrad keeps the overall tone disappointingly mild.

There's something distinctly American about a supermarket: the vast size, the corporate anonymity, the glut of choices that somehow never seem like choices at all. It's a ripe setting for a comedy, especially one that ventures through those swinging double doors in the back near the meat section to focus on the employees.

In "The Promotion," Seann William Scott ("Woodcock") plays Doug, an assistant manager at a Donaldson's market in Chicago who dreams of running the chain's new store. The job seems to be his until an equally amiable newcomer named Richard (John C. Reilly) puts in for the same position. What ensues is a battle between two would-be friends that escalates from harmless go-getting to ruthless jockeying to flat-out skulduggery.

Writer Steve Conrad ("The Weather Man"), making his directorial debut, accurately nails the small humiliations of workaday life - slogging through parking-lot duty, neating up that jagged row of soup cans - but he loses sight of the bigger picture. The war between Doug and Richard never reaches a fever pitch, mainly because Conrad seems unwilling to put his characters truly through the wringer. By going easy on everyone, he turns what could have been a searing satire into a lukewarm comedy.