Management
Dir Stephen Belber w/ Jennifer Aniston, Steve Zahn. 93 min. Special Presentations.
BY Damian Rogers
September 09, 2008 12:09
Playwright and screenwriter Stephen Belber makes his directorial debut with a relentlessly sweet and hopeful film that is miles away from his best-known play, Tape (adapted for film with Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman in 2001), a claustrophobic and viciously dark view of gender relations. Here, nice but useless Mike (Steve Zahn) works at his parents' Arizona motel with a listless boredom until Sue (Jennifer Aniston) and her “great butt” inspire him to ever-more improbable action. After a quickie in the laundry room, Mike pursues Sue across the country and back, his adoration more of a nuisance than a pleasure; he's that guy the woman discounts because he worships her out of proportion to how she sees herself. While the leads are excellent at unearthing fresh breath in familiar characters — hapless manchild who must learn to grow, emotionally hardened woman who must learn to love — the story itself never catches fire as either a comedy or a love story. Nice, but it could use more bite.
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