"Management" is a mellow slow dance of a romantic comedy that skips the "meet-cute" in favor of "awkward encounter" -- a bottle of bad wine and a modest motel room where absolutely nothing sexy or romantic happens, which turns out to be strangely appealing.
Writer-director Stephen Belber has created a world of low expectations that allows stars Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn to slip into comfortable clothes and play ordinary people -- as hard as that might be to imagine with gossip's golden girl -- with ordinary lives, something that suits them both well.
Belber also lets Aniston and Zahn, both just past 40, look their age. And for the most part no one is overdressed -- not the actors (with the possible exception of a punked-out Woody Harrelson, though it's hard to pin any of his excess on the filmmaker) or the sets or the script for that matter -- lending the film a certain mom-and-apple-pie sweetness with just a few sour bites.
What we have here is a heartland romance that begins at a seen-better-days roadside motel in Arizona, no amenities to speak of unless you count the four-lane highway adjacency. Mike (Zahn) is the night manager, a job he got because his parents run the place and, besides, the rent-free room off the office makes it all a little too easy for someone still trying to figure out what they want to do when they grow up.
But then Sue (Aniston) checks in for the night and nothing will ever be the same. She's sort of an off-white-collar worker, traveling the country selling artwork to hotels and motels. To Mike, she represents possibility and change, a love interest ready-made for the Obama era. The sight of Sue insisting on a nonsmoking room and looking for the recycling bin is the first thing in a very long time to penetrate his haze of indifferent resignation. He's desperate to meet her so as soon as his parents leave for the night, Mike shows up at her door with a bottle of wine "compliments of management."
She sizes him up. He looks harmless. And since apparently she has never seen any version of "Psycho," she lets him in.
If that hasn't derailed you, what comes next is a moment you just have to get past. When Mike won't take a hint to leave, Sue offers to let him spend 5 seconds with his hand on her backside. A hand on the butt? Really?
