Movie review: 'Management'

Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn (Credit: Suzanne Hanover/Samuel Goldwyn)

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2 stars (out of four)

Stephen Belber can write, and in more than one medium. He adapted his play “Tape” in 2001 into an intriguing and well-plotted feature-length indie film, and his TV credits are plentiful.

“Management,” however, is padding disguised as a feature-length screenplay, adapted from Belber’s one-act, which was laid out as a series of trysts between a tightly controlled lost soul who sells corporate motel-room art, played by Jennifer Aniston, and the foggy-headed manager (Steve Zahn) of a Kingman, Ariz., roadside motel owned by his folks.

Compliments of “the management,” Mike delivers a bottle of wine to Sue’s room (she’s traveling on business), and after a few forced pleasantries she allows him to palm one of her buttocks for a few seconds. This plays as oddly as it sounds. Then they have sex in the laundry room, and Sue returns to her old life in Baltimore—dull work enriched by volunteerism and soccer—forcing Mike to begin a cross-country campaign to stalk her or to woo her, depending on your outlook.

The theater and the movies have long thrived on stories that provoke the question: Would that really happen? The more pressing question: Is it interesting to watch the improbabilities unfold? Here, well, a little. Nonetheless the setup of “Management” feels like relational science-fiction.

The cast is game: Woody Harrelson plays Sue’s ex, a one-time punker turned yogurt magnate. Zahn and Harrelson have similar crazy-man glints in their eyes, and it’s too bad the material doesn’t light more of a fire around them. 

Aniston has yet to find an ideal screen role, different enough from “Friends” to be a surprise, close enough to her strengths to make casting sense. Her truest work onscreen came in another low-budget indie, “The Good Girl.” There Aniston seemed to do very little visible acting, yet she created a character of subtle pathos, telling and specific even when the script wandered. “Management” by contrast is lighter-toned. But it’s a little off, all the way through.

mjphillips@tribune.com

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