Mainstream comedies tend to be pretty loud affairs, quick and eager to flash some genitals and make some scat jokes to secure the most precious of commodities in a theater setting: the contagious belly-laugh. I think we can successfully credit (or blame, depending on your tastes) the Brothers Farrelly for the modern guffaw-fest, with emotional refinements brought in by the Judd Apatow posse and (God help us) Sex and the City. Everybody wins: the audience has a good, cathartic time, and big laff fests generate a lot of buzz, even if comedies are excluded almost by rule from any kind of awards recognition.

Quieter comedies, conversely, are an endangered breed. Their pleasures are stranger, harder to nail down—maybe even quaint in comparison. Not better, only different. A rare few succeed—behold The Office—but many more die, or never find their audience.

This is the uneasy ground The Promotion stands on, an intersection between observant comedy and a mild spice of the absurdity one tends to expect from its leads, Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly. I’m not talking out of my ass there, either; Reilly’s first entrance onto the screen is via a blandly sunny employee picture of the man smiling, and half the audience laughed loudly. That’s just the kind of expectation people have for him. Same for Scott, who narrates in a mild voice, wears mild clothing, and to my recollection only raises his voice once. People laugh because they expect these guys to be goofy.

But they’re not, and neither is the movie—though it sometimes strays into goofy territory. Scott and Reilly are Doug and Richard, two mild-mannered assistant managers at a grocery store both vying for the top spot at an as-yet unbuilt location. Doug’s the loyal employee who’s been at his current store a long time; Richard’s the “wild card” from Canada with a family and a Narcotics Anonymous sponsor. Doug wants a nice house for he and his fiancé Jen (Jenna Fischer). Richard, guided by self-help tapes, wants to prove to himself that he can succeed.

And it is that simple. They are two pleasant, sympathetic men who happen to want the same thing, and who happen to have a lot on the line—especially when Doug signs on for a house he won’t be able to afford if he doesn’t get the promotion. Complicating the mix is the intimiating presence of a member of the board (Gil Bellows), some hooligans in the parking lot, and enough nebulous pressure to push both men into actions they’d find unfamiliar. One gaffe by Richard is as pricelessly hilarious as it is squirm-inducing.

The urge to compare Doug and Richard’s competition to the current election is tempting but ultimately inaccurate. These are not outsized people with ridiculous quirks and goofy mannerisms, nor are they caricatures meant to stand in for anyone but themselves. Scott and Reilly are simply too good at hitting the notes to be that lazy. They are instead the unknowingly melancholy protagonists familiar to writer-director Steve Conrad’s work. Conrad wrote The Weather Man, another study in low-key struggle told with humor and sadness. The Promotion is more humor, less sad. It’s a warmer film, though tones of desperation underline every scene.

Which has led more than a few critics to discuss The Promotion’s “uneven tone.” It’s true there’s a lot of shifting going on: One moment may find Richard tap-dancing in a grocery aisle after hours, the next a flashback to his “lost years” as a biker, and then a scene where Doug drinks too much and shares his life story with disinterested party-goers at his wife’s boss’s barbeque. You’ll find yourself laughing at Richard even as you (and he) recognize he’s one more bad day away from backsliding and losing his family. But then, most humor comes at someone else’s expense. Maybe the conscious recognition of that is what’s making people so uncomfortable.

It’s a pungent and curiously affecting mix, made easier to swallow by the basic decency of the characters. You want them all to win, but of course they can’t.

Can they?