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The Promotion
After Dane Cook's Employee of the Month ripped out our interest in office-led comedies and stomped on it, The Promotion was a welcome breath of fresh air that has become a comedic emblem over here at Cinematical. It's graced a top films of 2008 list, popped up in a few fan rants, and has been part of a lot of multimedia. And now, after a modest release, the comedy is on DVD.

Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly play supermarket workers who vie for the same management position in a new store. Scott is told that he's a shoo-in for the gig, which will be nestled near his neighborhood, while Reilly is a new hire straight out of Quebec who is eager for the position. They fall into an insane battle of one-upmanship. In Scott's review, he said: "I just watched it with a jam-packed house at SXSW -- and these folks were laughing like nitrous oxide had just been pumped into the air ducts."

The disc features deleted scenes, a commentary with writer/director Steven Conrad and producers Jessika Borsiczky Goyer and Steven A. Jones, a making-off featurette, promotional webisodes, and finally, outtakes.

Check out Scott's Review | Buy the DVD

Yesterday, Scott posted a terrific month-by-month report card looking back the 2008 movie scene from the halfway point. With the interval between theatrical and DVD release dates shrinking steadily, a lot of the movies from January through June are either already available on DVD, or soon will be. For your consideration, here are what I consider to be seven underseen, underexposed, and/or unfairly overlooked gems from the year to date. Something to consider next time you log on to Netflix.

In no particular order:

1. Charlie Bartlett - I'll clamber out on a limb and call Charlie Bartlett the most valuable movie for young teenagers this decade (despite its R rating). Most films for kids and teens unthinkingly implore them not to worry about being popular -- do your own thing! Don't worry about what your peers think of you! Good advice in the abstract, maybe, but completely detached from reality for most school-age kids, who have to, you know, go to school, and eat in the cafeteria. Charlie Bartlett is smart enough to realize this. Rather than imploring kids to "be themselves," it wants to say something about what the ones who are actually popular should do with their popularity. For once, it's a movie with a message aimed not at the misfits but at the leaders: the kids who are smart, charismatic and capable; the schoolyard trendsetters and tastemakers. It powerfully suggests the importance of using that influence for good instead of evil. Oh, and it's bright, sincere, and very funny, with a downright miraculous performance by Anton Yelchin.

"If a film fell in the multiplex, and no one was there to see it..."

Limited release: such a simple phrase, and yet two words that all but indicate to a majority of moviegoers that whatever it is they want to see may or may not escape the confines of a NY/LA run before the film in question comes to them by way of Netflix mere months later.

Meanwhile, screens upon screens across the nation are filled by the likes of the same stars and the same stories, with the same special effects and the same happy endings, leaving the smaller films, the different films, the better films to slip through the distribution cracks, as it were.

Among their number falls The Promotion, a film which we've admittedly supported ad nauseum to the oh-so-ironic tune of $365,928 on a grand total of 81 screens. It opened just this past weekend in my market, Orlando, Fla., on a single screen, for a whopping four days, with a grand total of eight showings, before being shuffled off to make room for that other Jason Bateman co-starring comedy-drama hybrid.

It was the first day of July, and the last night for the film. Having enjoyed it twice before and driven by - I don't know - a sense of romantic futility, I turned out for that final showing. Lo and behold, I wasn't alone...

Genghis Khan rules! Sergei Bodrov's Mongol (Picturehouse), the first installment of a planned trilogy covering the Mongolian military leader, cleaned up at the indie box office, taking in $25,360 per screen, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady at Movie City News. Our own Jeffrey M. Anderson didn't even like the battle scenes -- "polite and observant rather than reckless or exciting" -- much less the movie as a whole. Eric D. Snider was more admiring, if not wildly enthusiastic, as were most critics (per Rotten Tomatoes).

Two films that opened at one theater each performed quite well. Take Out (Cavu Pictures) earned $9,900. Directed by Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou, the film depicts a day in the life of an illegal Chinese immigrant who must pay off a large debt to his smugglers or face the consequences. The only way to pay the debt? Get good tips from his wealthy delivery route. Both the New York Times and Village Voice were complimentary.

Eric Guirado's Grocer's Son (Film Movement) made $9,500. The titular character must leave the city to return to the country and care for his sick father's duties. Gradually he finds that the villagers are not so gruff after all, and romance might be blooming too. Slant Magazine and Variety published positive reviews, though noting various flaws.

That's a bit misleading there, in the title; Adam Sandler's You Don't Mess with the Zohan wasn't able to claim the weekend's top spot over Dreamworks Animation's Kung Fu Panda, but a) no one was really expecting it to do that, and b) Zohan's $40 million opening weekend is at least par for Sandler, roughly tying Click's opening weekend, and beating I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry by a handy $6 million. Sandler has only done measurably better with The Longest Yard, Anger Management and Big Daddy.

Panda, meanwhile, is an unadulterated victory. Its $60 million weekend beats everything in the Dreamworks Animation canon except the two Shrek sequels, and wouldn't have been a disappointment for any Pixar film. Good reviews and a witty, appealing ad campaign certainly helped, though I was kind of hoping that airing that insufferable Jack Black "silence is golden" intro in AMC theaters for the past, oh, eight months, would have backfired.

The 62% drop for Sex and the City shouldn't surprise anyone, though the folks at New Line/Warners probably had a reasonable hope of a bit more staying power. The 55% drop for The Strangers isn't too horrendous, and the $38 million cume on the micro-budgeted horror flick is a big win for Rogue regardless. Cinematical darling The Promotion debuted on 6 screens to a respectable but unspectacular $28,900 ($4,816 per screen).

Check out the top 10, and a look forward to next week, after the jump.

The tag line underneath Lou Lumenick's name should read, "Will provide sh*tty film reviews for fifty cents because that's about as much as my opinion is worth." Lumenick, who writes film reviews for the New York Post, is easily the worst critic of 2008 so far -- and, unlike his reviews, I'm actually going to back up that statement.

Lou reviewed The Promotion on Friday and gave it Zero stars. Look, I'll be the first to tell you The Promotion is in no way the greatest film of all time, but it's charming, humorous, human and has a lot of heart. But this has nothing to do with The Promotion, and everything to do with performing the job assigned to you.

Fine. Zero stars. We'll go with that; perhaps Lou spotted enough flaws to warrant the rating. But then I actually read Lumenick's "review" of The Promotion, which starts out saying the film's tagline should change to read, "No Laughs." Really? Because I've watched this film with two different audiences in two different states, and each time the audience was laughing ... a lot. Did you watch it with an audience, Lou? Probably not. But let's move on ...

(Note: We're re-posting our review of The Promotion from SXSW to coincide with the film's theatrical release this weekend.)

A few years ago, we were treated subjected to a retail farce known as Employee of the Month, a near-witless comedy that pitted Dane Cook and Dax Shepard against each other as moronic clerks who vie for the title of (you guessed it) Employee of the Month. I knew there was a lot of room for successful comedy in this sort of premise, but aside from a stray chuckle or two, EOTM was an entirely stale and completely sitcom-level effort.

Now comes a very small, very funny, and oddly warm-hearted flick in sort of the same vein. It's called The Promotion; it stars Sean William Scott and John C. Reilly; it was written and directed by first-timer Steve Conrad ... and if it comes out in 2008, then it will definitely end up in my top ten of the year. (Conrad is a first-time director; his previous screenplays include Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, The Weather Man, and The Pursuit of Happyness.) This is a fantastic little comedy, filled with all sorts of weird little moments and strange diversions, but at its core, The Promotion is a profanely sweet-natured dual character study that doles out a LOT of laughs while actually celebrating ... small doses of actual humanity! It's a great comedy with an excellent message delivered by a bunch of actors who are clearly savoring the material. (My normal m.o. is to "champion" smaller horror flicks, but a good movie is a good movie, period. If I can turn a dozen people onto The Promotion, then I'm doing my job.)

It's funny to see a film called The Promotion get very little, well, promotion from the folks distributing it to theaters this weekend. Granted, it's only opening in three cities on Friday (NYC, LA and Chicago), but I would've liked to see one commercial ... at least. Oh well. Hopefully when the film expands into other markets (fingers crossed), they'll throw a bit more money at it. Up until now, The Promotion has received mixed reviews. Everyone I saw it with at SXSW absolutely loved it, with the majority of us calling it one of the best comedies of the year. Other folks ... not so much.

I read a review today from someone who totally did not get the humor -- and The Promotion is definitely one of those films where if you don't get the humor, you might miss the punchline. This reviewer wanted to either like or dislike a character; instead, they didn't understand that both main characters (played by Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly) are good guys who have flaws -- some of which don't show until the pressure is on. These guys are awkward, nerdy, human -- The Promotion introduces us to two nice guys who desperately do not want to finish last. Because they've always finished last. But now they have a chance to finish first ... and each will go to great lengths to achieve that.

If you live in NYC, LA or Chicago, I'll ask that you please go see The Promotion this weekend. I have no ties to this film whatsoever, except that I like to plug a small, genuine comedy with a big heart. Check out a few new photos in the gallery below ... and let us know what you think after the movie.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive clip from The Promotion -- which, in case you've been living under a rock, is a film we've been championing ever since it premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival earlier this year. The Promotion follows two nice guys, as played by Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly, who just so happen to be going for the same job as manager of the new supermarket opening up across town. Written and directed by Steve Conrad (watch out for this guy; he's a keeper), the film relies more on uncomfortable, quiet humor than it does physical gags, pop culture references or raunchy dialgoue -- but it's still very successful, and definitely the kind of flick you want to see with an audience.

One of the film's greatest running gags is that Richard (Reilly) listens to these self-motivation tapes everywhere he goes. Thing is, the volume is cranked up and other people hear them too. Check out the scene above to see what I'm talking about, and make sure you go see The Promotion when it arrives in theaters on June 6.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive behind the scenes clip from the upcoming comedy The Promotion. How do actors like Seann William Scott prepare for their roles? Do they exercise? Do they scream at random strangers on the street? Or do they watch themselves starring in other movies? In the video above, watch as a cameraman catches Seann William Scott off guard; sitting in his dressing room, on the floor, watching The Rundown. This is one of a few videos that will soon make their way online; all of which, I believe, were put together by writer-director Steve Conrad.

Since we loved The Promotion so much when we caught it at SXSW, there's a good chance you'll see a lot more, well, promotion for The Promotion on Cinematical leading up to its June 6 release. The film stars Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly as two nice guys who both happen to be competing for the same job as manager of a local supermarket. Check out the trailer over here, as well as pictures and the poster in the gallery below.