Wildislander Review of The Promotion

The Promotion (2008)

If you like waiting for a payoff that never comes, this is your movie!

[3/10 · 15 November 2008]

This film had potential, but it never went anywhere. The pacing of the film was terrible - everything was so slow. The dialogue: it seemed like every character had to clear his throat before uttering a syllable. It's fine to draw out the suspense in a dialogue by slowing it down as long as there's a payoff for the audience. In this film, there was never a payoff for anything. The plot was slow too: the writers of this script forget to include anything resembling rising action, let alone a climax. About halfway through watching, I started fast forwarding to see if anything of any interest was going to happen. Nothing ever did. The jokes were crude, and really not very funny. To me this movie was a lot like Nacho Libre. Both were films that tried to recreate a sort of "Napoleon Dynamite" charm but utterly failed. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that I didn't care about the characters much. The best scene in the movie takes place when the two rival characters have a heart to heart chat while smoking a joint. It seems like perhaps they're going to team up to face the odds, or some sort of change is going to occur after the conversation. Unfortunately, nothing changes. This movie was terrible. If you like being frustrated be my guest. Otherwise steer clear of this one.