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Management

Movie Grade: B

Ok, so it didn't do too well at the box office, or with critics. And some people love to bash Jennifer Aniston. And most people usually have a strong aversion to stalkers. However, despite all this, these little things failed to sway my opinion about Management. I liked it.

Get past your unjustified hatred of Jennifer Aniston if need be, and put aside the stalker creep-factor for a brief moment and you might just see what I saw "” a sweet little movie about unlikely love. Albeit love between two people with one very significant thing in common: they're stuck. In their job, in their relationships, in their life "” in everything. They essentially need each other to pull themselves out of their rut. Except one of them realizes before the other, hence the stalker-like behavior.

Steve Zahn plays Mike, an ambitionless guy who lives and works at his parents' Arizona motel. Aniston plays Sue, a corporate art saleswoman in town on a business trip. Donning a reddish wig concealing her trademark golden locks, Aniston sheds her celebrity sheen to play a well-worn woman who's not too keen on life's little surprises. She thinks she wants stability and enjoys when everything "makes sense." Mike, on the other hand, is like a child. He's impulsive, he wears his heart on his sleeve, and he doesn't apologize for it.

When he first meets Sue at the check-in desk he's smitten, so he hatches an "” awkward "” plan to show up at her room with complimentary bottle service (an amenity he just made up). For some reason she lets him in and eventually allows him to touch her (clothed) butt. Don't ask, it was weird. Guess she didn't think he was a total weirdo though, because before she leaves the motel, she impulsively sleeps with him, thinking she'll never see him again.

Too bad he follows her back home to Maryland. But is he really a stalker if she's secretly glad to him? They're relationship isn't what you'd expect. You can tell Sue is genuinely fond of him, but she's scared to take a chance on someone who isn't "stable" (in the monetary sense, and maybe a little in the emotional sense too). Together the two need to work out their issues and become better people for one another; learn how to manage their lives so to speak. See what I did just then?

Zahn is his usual goofy, charming self. He's got a puppy dog quality to him, that even when he does outrageous, stalker-y things (like parachuting into Sue's pool), you still find him endearing. It's like, you wouldn't want something doing that to you, but well, it's cute when he does it.

And every now and then Aniston

finds an un-glossy smaller role to sink her teeth into ala The Good Girl. I like seeing Aniston play a messy character every once in a while. It reminds me that she's a real actress. Long, shiny hair doesn't make a role, after all.

The movie's biggest fault was throwing Woody Harrelson into the mix as an ex-punk-turned-yogurt company owner named Jango. Yes, Jango. He also happens to be Aniston's ex-boyfriend whom she begins dating again. The character was just too out there for you to ever believe that this would be someone Aniston's straitlaced character would go for.

And of course there are some real-life discrepancies. Like, what woman in her right mind would let a strange man into her seedy motel room "” even if he was management! But hey, it's a movie so I'll go with it. Stranger things have happened.

Management is harmless, though. Is it a movie you have to run to the theaters to see? Not while the likes of Star Trek and Terminator: Salvation are around. But don't rule it out completely.

Movie Grade: B

When Sue checks into the roadside motel owned by Mike’s parents in Arizona, what starts with a bottle of wine “compliments of MANAGEMENT” soon evolves into a multi-layered, cross-country journey of two people looking for a sense of purpose. Mike, an aimless dreamer, bets it all on a trip to Sue’s workplace in Maryland "” only to find that she has no place for him in her carefully ordered life. Buttoned down and obsessed with making a difference in the world, Sue goes back to her yogurt mogul ex-boyfriend Jango (Woody Harrelson), who promises her a chance to head his charity operations. But, having found something worth fighting for, Mike pits his hopes against Sue’s practicality, and the two embark on a twisted, bumpy, freeing journey to discover that their place in the world just might be together.