Management
Directed by Stephen Belber
Runtime: 93 min.
Back in B.A. (Before Angelina), Jennifer Aniston was capable of turning in an emotionally wrenching film performance. When freed from the joke-joke-beat rhythms of sitcoms, Aniston shined in movies like The Object of My Affection (still the best look at the dynamics of friendship between a gay man and a straight woman), and The Good Girl, a glorious downer that mercilessly dissected the ways in which a beautiful woman can be defeated by life. But for the most part, Aniston’s career has been a gloss over her celebrity stature. Her personal life may offer glamour, grit and heartbreak in equal amounts, but her acting jobs usually ask of her only that she maintain shiny hair. Management, however, gives Aniston a chance to break free, and she grabs at it with both hands.
As the prickly and repressed Sue, Aniston shines in ways that her glossier parts (and that mane of hers) have never allowed. In New Mexico for business, she checks into a rundown motel run by the retired parents of Mike Crenshaw (Steve Zahn), a man who fights his own loneliness by impulsively knocking on Sue’s motel room door with a dusty bottle of wine. Compliments of management, he stammers, before stepping into her room. Eventually, after a few scenes of crackling sexual tension (who knew Zahn had it in him?) and an encounter in the laundry room, Mike downs a bottle of booze and jumps on a Maryland-bound flight to prove to Sue that they belong together.
What makes Management successful, what prevents it from becoming about a creepy guy living with his parents who forms an unhealthy attachment to a transient woman, is the innocent exuberance that Zahn brings to Mike. The film’s trailer loudly advertises a scene in which Mike asks to touch Sue’s butt, but the five-second clip shears off the pathos and yearning of that moment. Mike compliments Sue’s ass; Sue impulsively tells him he can touch it. So the two of them stand in Sue’s nondescript motel room, Sue bent over the dresser with Mike’s hand lightly cupping her butt, making idle chitchat through the mirror. Director Stephen Belber has staged the scene for maximum laughs, but Zahn and Aniston hold the beats a split second too long for the scene to be just funny. In those fleeting moments, a real connection has been forged between Mike and Sue, regardless of the circumstances.
Management has been built around small moments like those, which make us forgive the larger, coarser set pieces, like Mike parachuting into the pool owned by Sue’s boyfriend Jango (Woody Harrelson doing a mediocre impression of himself). Zahn, a more accomplished comedian than his resume would suggest, makes those moments entertaining, but they’re beside the point. The brilliance of Belber and his cast is in burnishing the subtleties of this off-kilter romantic comedy to a high sheen that blinds us to Mike’s potential creepiness or Sue’s loud obsession with recycling. Imagine the movie with anyone else than Zahn and Aniston, and the whole thing falls apart. But with these two underdog performers, one an almost-was and the other consistently overshadowed by personal history, the nuances of their characters spring to full-fledged life.
Zahn’s Mike, all eagerness and naivete, is a perfect fit for Aniston’s regimented Sue. Neither of them seems like a perfect match for one another, but their idiosyncrasies fit together surprisingly well. And that’s true of the actors, as well, both of whom discover that their own peculiar, jagged edges snap together in place.
Directed by Stephen Belber
Runtime: 93 min.
Back in B.A. (Before Angelina), Jennifer Aniston was capable of turning in an emotionally wrenching film performance. When freed from the joke-joke-beat rhythms of sitcoms, Aniston shined in movies like The Object of My Affection (still the best look at the dynamics of friendship between a gay man and a straight woman), and The Good Girl, a glorious downer that mercilessly dissected the ways in which a beautiful woman can be defeated by life. But for the most part, Aniston’s career has been a gloss over her celebrity stature. Her personal life may offer glamour, grit and heartbreak in equal amounts, but her acting jobs usually ask of her only that she maintain shiny hair. Management, however, gives Aniston a chance to break free, and she grabs at it with both hands.
As the prickly and repressed Sue, Aniston shines in ways that her glossier parts (and that mane of hers) have never allowed. In New Mexico for business, she checks into a rundown motel run by the retired parents of Mike Crenshaw (Steve Zahn), a man who fights his own loneliness by impulsively knocking on Sue’s motel room door with a dusty bottle of wine. Compliments of management, he stammers, before stepping into her room. Eventually, after a few scenes of crackling sexual tension (who knew Zahn had it in him?) and an encounter in the laundry room, Mike downs a bottle of booze and jumps on a Maryland-bound flight to prove to Sue that they belong together.
What makes Management successful, what prevents it from becoming about a creepy guy living with his parents who forms an unhealthy attachment to a transient woman, is the innocent exuberance that Zahn brings to Mike. The film’s trailer loudly advertises a scene in which Mike asks to touch Sue’s butt, but the five-second clip shears off the pathos and yearning of that moment. Mike compliments Sue’s ass; Sue impulsively tells him he can touch it. So the two of them stand in Sue’s nondescript motel room, Sue bent over the dresser with Mike’s hand lightly cupping her butt, making idle chitchat through the mirror. Director Stephen Belber has staged the scene for maximum laughs, but Zahn and Aniston hold the beats a split second too long for the scene to be just funny. In those fleeting moments, a real connection has been forged between Mike and Sue, regardless of the circumstances.
Management has been built around small moments like those, which make us forgive the larger, coarser set pieces, like Mike parachuting into the pool owned by Sue’s boyfriend Jango (Woody Harrelson doing a mediocre impression of himself). Zahn, a more accomplished comedian than his resume would suggest, makes those moments entertaining, but they’re beside the point. The brilliance of Belber and his cast is in burnishing the subtleties of this off-kilter romantic comedy to a high sheen that blinds us to Mike’s potential creepiness or Sue’s loud obsession with recycling. Imagine the movie with anyone else than Zahn and Aniston, and the whole thing falls apart. But with these two underdog performers, one an almost-was and the other consistently overshadowed by personal history, the nuances of their characters spring to full-fledged life.
Zahn’s Mike, all eagerness and naivete, is a perfect fit for Aniston’s regimented Sue. Neither of them seems like a perfect match for one another, but their idiosyncrasies fit together surprisingly well. And that’s true of the actors, as well, both of whom discover that their own peculiar, jagged edges snap together in place.
