Jennifer Aniston, Steve Zahn and Woody Harrelson star in this charming romantic comedy, which follows the awkward romance between an unlikely couple. Mike (Zahn) doesn't have a lot going on. Cooped up in his parents' lifeless roadside motel in Arizona, he spends his days parked behind the front desk or completing mundane chores. When Sue (Aniston) checks in, Mike jumps at the chance to flirt. A buttoned-down corporate art broker, she is at first resistant to Mike's modest charms. But when she finally relents for what she thinks will be a meaningless fling in the motel's laundry room, the result is farther-reaching – and more hilarious – than she could have anticipated.
It turns out that Mike is a true romantic, waiting for a dream to follow. Although Sue is quick to move on after the affair, Mike decides to track her down in her hometown, playing it just this side of stalking. Sue's life is strictly ordered and ironed out, and she has no place for this child of a man with his impish humour and a guileless adoration. To complicate things, she has rekindled a romance with her ex-boyfriend Jango (Harrelson), a punk rocker-turned-yogurt entrepreneur who hopes to make Sue his dairy queen. But as Mike begins to grow up and Sue learns to let go, they open the door for a very sweet meeting of dreams.
Stephen Belber's debut feature melds the suburban setting that Aniston used so well in Miguel Arteta's The Good Girl with the eccentric spirit of Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love. A practised master of comic reaction, Aniston fills in the details of her character with confidence. Zahn's forlorn Mike begins as one of the hapless man-children so common in contemporary comedy, but he brings new notes to what in many cases has become formula. They both benefit from the presence of Harrelson as their foil, whose buff tycoon is ripped straight from the pages of Fortune magazine.Funny, sexy and endearingly hopeful, Management makes the most improbable kind of love seem possible.
Cameron Bailey
Stephen Belber was born in Washington, D.C., and studied at Trinity College in Connecticut and at the Juilliard School in New York City. He has written extensively for the stage, television and film. His television credits include the series Rescue Me and Law & Order SVU. He wrote the screenplays for the feature films Tape (01), Drifting Elegant (06) and Management (08), which is also his directorial debut.