Management is easily one of the stupidest movies I’ve ever
seen. I cannot recommend it to anyone, for any reason.
The film is the directing and solo-writing debut of Stephen Belber.
He was the playwright behind Tape (adapted for film by Richard
Linklater) and was an associate writer of the play The Laramie
Project. In Management, I can’t find a whiff of the talent
he obviously possesses.
One reading of Management — a reading that at least
provides a framework of stupidity for the greater stupidity — is
that the film is a celebrity/clichéd-blue-state-elite fantasy
about citizens of the fly-over states. The daydream: to be loved by the
unworthy, to induce them to improve their lives on the basis of your
beauty, and, so influenced, to metamorphose them into beings
worthy of your love.
Sue (Jennifer Aniston) is an East Coast corporate-art saleswoman
overnighting at the Kingman motel in Kingman, Arizona — a stop on
I-40 in the beautiful wastes between Flagstaff and Barstow, California.
The Baltimorean looks sharp in her business suit, which is enough to
earn the fixation of Mike (Steve Zahn), the motel’s night manager who
may or may not be, er, mentally challenged.
Mike falls in instant infatuation with Sue. So, premise: A creepy
motel guy who has no social training obsesses about his female guest
(who is essentially all alone in the middle of nowhere) and compliments
her derriere and so she sleeps with him. Because, under all that mouth
breathing, there’s a sweet guy.
Before she flees back to Maryland, Sue gripes about recycling. Mike
is inspired and starts collecting plastic and glass. Then he flies to
Baltimore to follow his muse, surprising her at her office.
Inexplicably, Sue doesn’t call security. Instead, she lets him tag
along as she plays soccer and passes out Burger King vouchers to the
homeless. Then Sue invites Mike back to her eco-friendly home. Then
they share a bumper-car montage at an amusement park. Then she puts him
on a bus back to Arizona.
Their bonds deepen as they interact across America. A boyfriend for
Sue appears, in the form of an intense hipster, ex-punk rocker named
Jango (Woody Harrelson), who owns an organic yogurt company. Mike’s mom
judges that Sue’s emotionally annihilated, but underneath the
blue-steel exterior is a good person.
Sue saves everyone but herself, Mike determines. He tells her,
“You’re so busy being selfless, you treat yourself like shit.”
Meanwhile, the Lynyrd Skynyrd posters on Mike’s wall become banners for
Greenpeace. Presumably, blue staters everywhere swoon.
The problem with all of this isn’t that that it’s deeply cynical and
simplistic about Americans, that it’s inane and pretentious with no
grounding in reality, and that it amounts to little more than
indie-cred posturing. No, the problem is that this dressed-up romantic
comedy lacks humor and charm.
Management
Opening Friday, June 19th
Ridgeway Four