Reviewed by Anne Wollenberg
Stars Jennifer Aniston, Steve Zahn, Woody Harrelson, Fred Ward, Margo Martindale, James Liao, Katie O'Grady,
Yolanda Suarez, Kevin Heffernan, Don Burns
Written by Stephen Belber
Certification UK 15 | US R
Runtime 93 minutes
Directed by Stephen Belber
You may have heard that Management is a touching comedy. Perhaps you watched the trailer and thought it seemed sunny and likeable, a romantic comedy that lacked both the excess sugar of the mainstream Hollywood fare that Jennifer Aniston’s said to want to move away from, and the achingly hip snark of the too-indie-for-school brigade.
You’d be wrong, though. Imagine this: a film in which a somewhat miserable corporate decorative art seller (translation: she flogs paintings) stays at a drab motel where the night manager asks if he can touch her butt in return for some free champagne. For reasons unknown, he does actually manage to (literally) share a spin cycle with her, and uses this as an excuse to fly across the country and basically stalk her. Mike (Zahn) doesn’t even take the hint when Sue (Aniston) gets back together with her ex-boyfriend Jango (Harrelson), an ex-punk who keeps pit bulls and lauds it over a megabucks frozen yoghurt empire, moving from Maryland to Washington State without bothering to tell him. She’s just not into him, but that’s not going to deter Mike from continuing his pursuit, or from parachuting into her swimming pool.
Steve Zahn deserves a star vehicle, but Management isn’t it. He’s much sweeter than the lecherous married cop who met Amy Adams for motel room shags in Sunshine Cleaning, but he’s no Romeo. He’s no bunny boiler either, just a goofy, geeky loser whose motivations never quite make sense. Poor Mike. He’s fallen for a woman who rejects his attempts to woo her with a robotic: “Mike, that’s unacceptable.” Sue (Aniston) isn’t boardroom sexy, nor is she particularly whimsical, she’s just bored. If Jennifer Aniston wants to break new ground, she’s not going to do it with a film like Management. Sue is like a sadder, duller version of The Good Girl’s Justine, incapable of imagining any way out of the carefully ordered confines of her life.
No matter how much you accept that rom-coms can’t possibly mimic real life, a movie that makes a woman choose between a pit bull obsessive with a lousy sense of humour and a guy who barely thinks twice before pawning his dead mother’s necklace has little to offer anybody. Management seems to realise this, veering off on bizarre tangents – a sojourn to a Buddhist monastery, for example – that add nothing to the overall sense of joylessness that’s inherent in this picture. This is no whimsical boy-meets-girl, girl-steals-boy’s-heart affair, and if that’s what you’re looking for, you’re better off sticking to (500) Days of Summer, because there’s very little in the way of sunshine to be seen here.