The Promotion

Director: Steve Conrad

On the surface, “the customer is always right” may seem like the ultimate corporate management dictum but as my favorite boss once told me, the real strategy is to never let the customers make a scene. Strange advice from a former heavy metal drummer with plenty of stories of things getting out of control but realizing I’ve never been fond of public scenes of any kind, I took Dave’s advice to heart and despite a few unavoidable hiccups with those who seem to delight in perpetuating misery, it made my employment run infinitely smoother. Unfortunately, for the audience, this advice has never made it to the ear of The Promotion’s main character Doug (Seann William Scott). Slaving away as the hapless assistant manager, Doug fights against impromptu slaps by a gibberish speaking Teddy Graham coveting rebel and trying to broker peace between himself and his two apathetic fourteen year old security guards who—unsurprisingly-- seem more devoted to their cell phones than trying to deal with an intimidating young gang that terrorizes the shoppers and employees of the film’s supersized fictitious Donaldson’s Chicago grocery store. Of course, if Doug had been informed of this tactic, Pursuit of Happyness and Weather Man writer Steve Conrad wouldn’t have had a film with which to make his directorial debut. Although, dubbed “one of the unfunniest comedies ever,” by The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt who also wrote that “watching The Promotion” should be added “to the Geneva Conventions’ list of humanitarian abuses,” possibly that would’ve been the best thing all around… if only-- much like our sad-sack Doug-- for filmgoers to avoid scenes as unpleasant as the ones found in The Promotion.

In a film that makes the similarly themed Dane Cook, Dax Shepard, and Jessica Simpson vehicle Employee of the Month look downright Shakespearean, our struggling thirty-three year old Doug assumes that his years of serving time in Donaldson’s under a boss who escapes to daytime matinees and car washes while he contends with an overabundance of customer complaint cards will be coming to a deserved end when he learns the chain is building a brand new store nearby. Convinced he’s a “shoo-in” for a promotion to manager at the new location, Doug and his hardworking wife Jen (The Office’s Jenna Fischer) purchase a home they can’t afford to escape their amorous gay banjo playing neighbors. Predictably, a wrench is thrown into Doug’s path in the form of John C. Reilly’s Richard, an aggressively friendly Canadian from Quebec who transfers down to Doug’s store with the intention of going after the same position and cushy benefits package for his new baby and Scottish wife Laurie (Lili Taylor using a hilarious Scottish Canadian hybrid accent) that he’d met while on a Christian mission. Initially unable to get a handle on the new “wild-card” Richard whom we later learn is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, Doug and the newbie sidle up to one another, forming a strange professional bond that seems borderline friendly and competitive but grows increasingly acrimonious when Doug is relegated to near permanent parking lot duty in favor of self-actualization, self-help book-on-tape obsessed Richard.

All one has to do to anticipate the squirm-inducing, awkward and frankly painful stabs at humor in what I felt seemed like a manic-depressive screenplay is to reread the aforementioned descriptions one more time—a man who may lose his house; a recovering addict—not exactly the most surefire ways to garner laughs. While I applaud Conrad’s ingenuity and willingness to go against standard movie clichés, as Roger Ebert noted, the film is never quite sure of its tone, similar to the writer’s woefully uncomfortable Weather Man. In addition, I still can't get over the troubling realization that I found circulating throughout my screening notes that an overwhelming majority of the humor seemed to stem from cheap shots involving minorities (whether homosexual, ethnic, or mentally disabled). While I can’t imagine this was the film or Conrad’s intention, I couldn't help questioning just how and why so many talented cast members including Bobby Cannavale and Jason Bateman (who turn in nice cameos) even bothered to get involved. Mercifully, it will most likely be buried in the wake of the Edward Norton starrer The Hulk this weekend here in Phoenix, again reminding us that in addition to not wanting to witness such a disastrous scene, when it comes to mean-spirited and dissatisfying drivel like this-- by staying away in droves, in the end the customer is always right.

I Really Hate My Job

Director: Oliver Parker

Following a voice over narration which drowns out the visually atmospheric introduction of London’s hustle and bustle before the action is transferred to the claustrophobic setting of Stella Bar in Soho, author Alice (Shirley Henderson) receives a letter from her publisher informing the scribe that her latest manuscript has been rejected as both “unmarketable” and “mind-numbing.” Shortly thereafter, one begins to feel exactly the same way about writer Jennifer Higgie’s unfocused, rambling, and over-the-top screenplay which, just like Alice’s overly intellectualized novel, seems to be in dire need of revision.

Director Oliver Parker has proven in the past that he has a penchant for plays with the inventive adaptation of An Ideal Husband and the mediocre yet watchable versions of Othello (saved by Kenneth Branagh) and The Importance of Being Earnest. He seems to be up to his old theatrical tricks once again when tackling Higgie’s text, which although it tries to pass itself off as a film, seems like it would have been better suited to an avant-garde or experimental college feminist theatre troupe production rather than the world of independent film. Saddled with an unimaginative and narrow title that fails to highlight the film’s ensemble nature, Parker relies heavily on his talented cast to disguise the many shortcomings as we spend a chaotic, irritating, and disaster ridden evening among five female restaurant employees who find themselves in charge of the entire bar after they’re unexpectedly disappointed by two other male employees off-screen.

While task-master Madonna (Anna Maxwell Martin)-- a well-intentioned but largely ineffective manager tries to promote working as a team and trying to cover up her soon to be broken heart, affable Henderson’s Alice suffers burns and catastrophe slaving away in the kitchen alongside a maniacal dishwashing assistant named Rita (Oana Pellea) who smokes like a chimney and spouts communist revolutionary theories with zero prompting. Rounding out the group is the film’s saving grace in the form of the sweet but admittedly dim German art student Suzie (Alexandra Maria Lara) whose innocent naiveté provides an entirely welcome counterpoint to Neve Campbell’s brash, debt-ridden struggling actress Abbie who comes to work on her thirtieth birthday and proceeds to have a breakdown over the course of the ninety minute film.

Unsuccessfully trying to cram far too many offbeat (and 99% unlikable) characters into the chaotic production does little to endear Parker’s film to audiences, despite a nice cameo in the end by actor Danny Huston who seems to have both waltzed in from and onto an entirely different production altogether. While every once in awhile an actress delivers a killer line you know you’ll remember long after you hit eject, you can’t help wondering how much better it would’ve been if-- much like Alice’s manuscript-- they’d streamlined it when it was still in the writing stage by trimming the fat, combining personalities or removing some of the unruly characters altogether.

Flakes

Director:
Michael Lehman

The premise is ingenious—with allusions to the "battle" between Starbucks and mom and pop coffee houses, screenwriters Chris Poche and Karey Kirkpatrick (Over the Hedge) decide to take a slacker's-eye view of corporate America by setting the bulk of the script’s action in a mom and pop breakfast bar.

Yes, you read that correctly—in Flakes, we’re granted access to the tiny bar by the same name which, although owned by barely functioning airhead hippie Willie (a wasted Christopher Lloyd) is run by young, hardworking manager Neal Downs (Aaron Stanford). Similar to the way that snobbish Rob (John Cusack) coveted obscure albums and cherished Top Five Lists in High Fidelity, Neal is equally fetishistic about the product he peddles— namely, breakfast cereal-- which he serves up like a bartender to the bar’s regulars including stoners, cereal collectors, and even a pretty groupie named Strawberry, mixing equal parts of one with another, knowing when to cut someone off and when to clue them in on a cooler confection.

When his self-employed artist girlfriend, Miss Katz (the fabulous Zooey Deschanel) quits hawking her collection of ironic handpainted t-shirts, she tries to convince Neal to take a week off and hire her in his place so that he’ll finish the CD he’s been working on for ages. Worried that mixing business with the bedroom will kill their relationship, Neal negotiates with Miss Katz to move in with him instead but business interferes anyway when they meet a determined grad school yuppie named Stuart (Keir O’Donnell). Essentially summed up by Neal as a “Banana Republic Guy,” the enthusiastic Stuart decides to rip off both Flakes and Starbucks by opening a larger, cleaner and more professional version of Flakes directly across the street after he’s unable to convince Neal to join him in franchising Willie’s cereal bar. Seemingly confirming Miss Katz’s suspicion that Neal may think of himself more as a cereal guy who plays music and less like a musician just holding down a job, Neal abandons his CD work and declares war on Stuart’s bar, which puts an even greater strain on their relationship when a fed up Katz accepts a job with Stuart to try and force her boyfriend to wake up to what is really important.

Although the terrifically inventive premise coupled with Deschanel’s pitch-perfect delivery of the dialogue consisting of her trademark combination of cynicism and charm temporarily elevates the film from its small-screen set-up, ultimately it’s a forgettable, highly inauthentic time-waster where the characters seem about as real as Tony the Tiger. Initially, Flakes does impress with its enchantingly atmospheric New Orleans location, offering it up like a surprise toy in a box of cereal but unfortunately the setting much like Deschanel and Lloyd, is given very little with which to work in yet another bummer flick from Because I Said So helmer Michael Lehman following his adorable Truth About Cats and Dogs and cult classic Heathers. Overall, the downfall of Flakes comes in trying to combine Reality Bites with High Fidelity by pouring on more sugars and toppings in the hope of disguising the finished product. Instead of a balanced breakfast, in the end you’re left with a woefully unbalanced film... not to mention one with a distinctly bad sour milk and Froot Loops aftertaste when you realize how much potential it had to make it work.

Arranged (2007)

Read the Film Movement Beyond Borders: 3-Disc Box Set Review (10/30/14)

Directors: Diane Crespo and Stefan Schaefer

“Someone should be shooting a commercial for world peace,” fourth grade teacher Nasira Khaldi (Francis Benhamou) jokes to her coworker turned friend Rochel Meshenberg (Zoe Lister-Jones) when the two women bump into one another in a New York park and encourage their younger relatives to play together.

It’s a recurring joke throughout the inviting, original and warmhearted American independent film Arranged that focuses on two young women in their early twenties who, despite their religious differences as a Muslim (Nasira) and an Orthodox Jew (Rochel), are both dealing with similar issues of parental pressure and familial obligation in the quest to marry the two teachers off.

In Rochel's case, this tradition calls for utilizing the talents of a matchmaker who pitches men to her client as if she’s selling automobiles by evaluating their job performance, sustainability and prominence. However for Nasira, it’s a bit more laid back as their father invites over a much older family friend in the hopes that his young daughter will find love with an uncouth gentleman prone to chatting animatedly with food in his mouth.

Meanwhile Rochel contends with a series of disastrous matchups including a painfully awkward first encounter with a man who acts as though he’d rather voluntarily show up for a root canal than a date, along with one man who lets himself into the place and proceeds to snoop through everything while running at the mouth his own sales pitch covering his accomplishments.

Both targets from their female principal who, in trying to compliment their beauty patronizes their beliefs by offering them money to go out and buy designer clothes and have a drink to start taking advantage of the women’s movement, the two modestly dressed new teachers sit singularly at tables away from the more daring and cliquish women their age at the school.

However, the film's leads really hit it off when children question whether or not they hate one another because of what they’ve heard on the news.

In offering the students a unity circle exercise, Rochel and Nasira conduct their own diversity celebration that seems to be far more accessible than the perfunctory district mandated training shown at the start of the film. Sure enough as the women begin spending more time together away from work, they realize they have far more in common than they first assumed.

Touchingly authentic and believably executed, directors Diane Crespo and Stefan Schaefer’s appealing film was a hit in the film festival circuit.

An official selection at the South by Southwest Film Festival and the Miami Jewish Film Festival, Arranged earned the audience award at Berkshire International Film Festival as well as the Grand Chameleon Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2007 Brooklyn International Film Festival before making its way to DVD from our friends at Film Movement.

Great World of Sound

Director:
Craig Zobel

“Just because it’s a lie, it doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea,” Clarence (Kene Holliday) explains to his record company associate Martin (Pat Healy) while trying to justify feigning snapping photos on a lens-free cell phone, reasoning that it helps to boost confidence while closing deals in director Craig Zobel’s wholly original Great World of Sound.

Of course it’s this kind of thinking that has caused the men, obviously lacking in the field of logic (unless they’re just accustomed to blind, naïve trust), to accept jobs with the shady Great World of Sound which has just relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina from Chicago. Why the move was made, it’s not immediately known but when Martin turns up for the job interview and finds his would be employers in the midst of cardboard boxes, surprisingly it’s his background that comes into question as the interviewer criticizes the number of moves on his resume that had found Martin moving from various cities for work in his field.

To the higher ups at Great World of Sound, constant motion is an indication of laziness yet there’s something about Martin, perhaps in his willingness to go along with whatever they tell him, that inspires them to give the man a chance and wouldn’t you know, soon they’re calling on his fondness for constant motion in sending him out on the road scouring for new musical talent.

Working with the more dynamic salesman Clarence, also newly hired as a producer, the two men learn that instead of trying to weed through the auditioning masses for viable talent, they have to think of Great World of Sound like an all-encompassing university and it’s their job to sign as many musicians as they can, all the while knowing that most will not “graduate.”

Faster than you can say “something’s rotten in Charlotte,” they’re told that due to the intricacies of CD production and recording costs, they have to request payment from the musicians as a sign of good faith. While $3,000 is the target number that the “financial contributions” Great World of Sound tries to solicit from would-be artists, Martin and Clarence quickly become the best salesman-- or I mean producers-- when they realize that quantity counts and begin taking payments in the hundreds.

“You really think that’s all there is to producing?” Martin questions near the beginning of their new career and while any viewer with half a brain realizes that they’re working for a con operation, it’s amazing the length of time and amount of justification the two main characters need to realize the exact same thing.

Zobel’s film, which was written by the director and George Smith, played at both the Sundance and South by Southwest Film Festivals and after earning Zobel a Gotham Breakthrough Director Award, garnered two Independent Spirit nominations in the categories of Best First Feature and Best Supporting Male (Holliday). Despite its admittedly repetitive nature and dubiously dim “heroes” as the characters try to sign every new auditioning artist, Great World of Sound profits from an undeniably clever and unmerciful script. In addition, the humor that is heightened by the actors who, unlike their characters, fight the urge to “sell” their jokes and make the film a parody by instead playing it straight, making Great World of Sound feel far more compelling and frighteningly authentic than a typical night of American Idol.

Hannah Takes the Stairs

Director: Joe Swanberg

By now the phrase “We should probably talk later,” seems to echo the same sentiment as “Don’t call me, I’ll call you,” or “I hope we can still be friends,” that all daters seem to use while trying to process how to break up with someone. “We should probably talk later,” is a phrase I’ve personally used (more times than I care to admit since knock on wood, so far I’ve always been the dumper although that’s hardly a victory) and it’s the same one that Hannah (Greta Gerwig) tells her first of three boyfriends shortly into the delightful indie comedy Hannah Takes the Stairs. Although it’s used early on, viewers who, like Hannah, are in their twenties know damn well that it won’t be the last time we hear either those exact words or something similar from our feisty, hyper, annoyingly indecisive and self-obsessed yet unquestionably bright and affable heroine. No, we find ourselves making the decision to break up often before it dawns on Hannah as the young college graduate navigates through the instantly relatable and compulsively addictive terrain of three slightly older men including her twenty-eight year old boyfriend Mike (Puffy Chair writer and star Mark Duplass) who quit his job since work nor rocking out in bands is no longer making him happy, the moody and self-deprecating intellectual narcissist in humility’s clothing Paul (Mutual Appreciation and Funny Ha Ha writer/director Andrew Bujalski), and thanks to the gifts of antidepressants, the higher functioning fellow trumpet playing writer Matt (filmmaker Kent Osborne).

Shot without a script or without much in the way of a plot, Hannah Takes the Stairs isn’t quite as mesmerizing as Bujalski’s films that are also included in the, as The New York Times explains “Do-It-Yourself” style independent movement Bujalski named “mumblecore” with self-involved characters who chat about nothing in films with low-production value. Yet, despite this, Hannah is one that feels less like a vanity project than some other mumblecore offerings and seems to be an articulate, recognizable if slightly ridiculous film that keys into the aimless wanderings of intellectual twentysomethings still trying to figure out just where to go from here. Reared on pop culture, the characters like Hannah admittedly suffer from “chronic dissatisfaction” yet in between their ramblings amidst these messy Cassavetes like glimpses of people all striving to find meaning, they manage to ask some pretty engaging questions about life, art, the manic state of romantic crushes and the fleeting nature of love. In other words, when the conversation is this engaging, suddenly the phrase “we should probably talk later” doesn’t seem so dire after all.

Blonde Ambition

Director:
Scott Marshall

Luke Wilson must have a thing for blondes—from romancing Reese in Legally Blonde to trying to make time with ambitious Jessica Simpson in Blonde Ambition, he’s always the scruffy, sheepish, downright puppy-eyed cutie whose eyes are on the golden haired prize. A smash box office hit in Ukraine that’s outdone the exceptional yet admittedly depressive American exports of No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood and others, Blonde bombed so monumentally here in the U.S. even in Wilson and Simpson’s home state of Texas that it ended up making its national premiere at video stores near you. With Simpson’s weak performances in past films and its failure here in the states, I was expecting to hate it but was actually surprised that it wasn’t as horrible as one would think and I even caught myself laughing more than I would have guessed.

Similar to the Paltrow vehicle View From the Top that seems like a film out of time and one that would’ve faired better in the 60’s, this dimwitted yet unceasingly sunny offering finds country bumpkin Katie Gregerstich (Simpson playing a character whose name alone will make you laugh) leaving her general store running Pap Paw (Willie Nelson) to visit her boyfriend in the Big Apple, only to discover that the hand modeling hottie (Drew Fuller) is as deceitful and conceited as he is attractive when another woman creeps out from under his bed’s covers. After gathering herself and going to stay with her aspiring actress cousin Haley (Rachael Leigh Cook who’s the best part of the film), Katie is manipulated by a power hungry construction vice president (Penelope Ann Miller) and her goofy sycophant (Andy Dick who also costarred in Simpson’s Employee of the Month) when she gains employment as the administrative assistant to company president Richard Connelly (Larry Miller). Although the unsuspecting Gregerstich is sabotaged at every turn in amusing ways that range from Miller and Dick getting kids hopped up on Rock Star energy drinks and sending stripper cops to a children’s birthday party complete with a firecracker spewing piñata to trying to form a bad impression on Norwegian priests who instead get a kick out of Katie and go bar hopping with beer and karaoke, she mostly succeeds in her goal and becomes the recipient of a flirtation from courier Ben (Luke Wilson).

However, some of the film’s juvenile humor, not to mention the poor acting skills of Simpson that seem to be exacerbated by the frequent usage of close-ups and distractingly tarty makeup of garish red lipstick and electric blue eyeshadow that accentuate her freakishly Aquafresh whitened teeth (which becomes a joke throughout the film) calls far too much attention to itself and less time should’ve been spent on Simpson’s looks to carry the film and more on keeping things light and fun. Director Scott Marshall, who is the son of Garry Marshall with whom he’d worked as an assistant director on several films casts his aunt Penny Marshall in a tiny cameo near the end. While it won't be nearly as popular here as in Ukraine, Simpson's film will appeal strongly to her fan base and may even surprise a few viewers like myself, who don't even come close to falling into that category. Of course, it will also do well with men like Luke Wilson who may soon need a twelve step program for blondes!