Management (2009)

Perfect cast for the perfect job! Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn really nailed it. Enjoyable plot and a great performance. I also think that the performance by James Hiroyuki Liao as Al on this movie was superb - I think he should be featured in more movies.

A couple of movies back, I cautioned Jennifer Aniston against taking strictly "girlfriend" roles in which, if her character was eliminated from the story, there would be virtually no consequence. She must have heard me. In Management, she plays much more than a flighty, bohemian squeeze for a bigger star. She plays a skirt-suited, professional career woman, who takes a slightly odd love interest…and first billing.The script zigzags between dark comedy and awkward romance, matching the questionable pairing of Aniston and Steve Zahn. And while it masters neither genre, it's not at all unpleasant to watch. Some of the romance is cringe-worthy, and some of it is really sweet. I've seen it twice. Try it once and see if you like it!

This is the sort of film you aren't surprised if it goes straight to DVD or is made for TV, it's a slow starter, low budget style and rather basic. The premise doesn't really make any sense, at the start, in the real world, and if it was anyone other than Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn in the main roles I don't think it would have been at all believable. I got the impression from this that Aniston was just collecting her pay cheque and as another reviewer stated it really is Zahn's film - with honourable mention to the wonderful Fred Ward and Woody Harrelson. Again, if the simple naïve acting was done by anyone other than Zahn, I think viewers would consider it to be empty but he brings a gravitas to it as he is known for being such a talent.The film is predictable to a certain extent, but does play out with a degree of satisfaction. The film certainly improves half way through, up until that point I didn't really see much positive as it was too slow and silly. As the characters mature, especially Zahn, and Harrelson makes an appearance to add some conflict, the story picks up pace and I found myself sitting up a bit and paying more attention. The film unravels into a quite sweet philosophical and convincing romcom. A few laugh out loud moments but the film is more amusing than comical, and evolves into quite a touching story. Not one I'd see again, perhaps, but one I don't regret seeing.

This movie started out so boring that I stopped watching it after ten minutes of NOTHING happening but Aniston's character sitting in a motel room and Zahn's character entering and leaving with bottles of alcohol. I gave this movie another chance, and that is all I will ever give it. None of the characters have any point, any motivation to do anything, especially Woody Harrelson's character. I'm sad he's even affiliated with this movie. Aniston works for a company that sounds totally made-up and stupid, Corporate Bliss, and yet has some unfounded yearning to help homeless people. Zahn is just a creep that wants to get some from her because he likes her butt. So when Aniston stays at the motel, she lets him touch her butt and the next day she decides to have sex with him because, I guess he just wasn't creepy enough. So she goes home to her pointless life in this plot less movie, only to have Zahn show up at her place of work. So what do they do? They go play soccer together, what all people who have just met and had a one-night stand and then travel across the country do. Then he creepily stays at her house and sneaks into the bed to watch her sleep. I didn't find this cute at all nor charming, and the dialogue is inappropriate for the situation. Nothing is believable and every character is so one-dimensional it hurts. So next morning they go to a carnival!! How fun! Why did Mike even go to see her? Why did we see a scene of Aniston giving out meal vouchers to homeless people? That didn't warm our hearts at all. No feeling in this movie.So after the carnival Zahn reviews how much the homeless people and soccer gals love Aniston, and now we know why those pointless scenes were thrown in there. Did a fourth grader write this?So he leaves, and before we can feel anything, after the movie wastes more of our time by showing shots of the "passage of time", there Aniston is back at the hotel. Meanhwhile all we have learned is that Zahn is at the hotel and doing nothing but being a boring person.They then share a supposedly meaningful yoga class, where we further learn NOTHING or have any emotional investment in the characters. Aniston reveals her plans to open a homeless shelter. The writers (if there were any) are just pulling from thin air.Then all of a sudden Zahn takes her to his mother's house, where she is dying, and we had no investment in her so when she dies it DOESN'T MATTER! Sure we can think about what it's like to lose someone, but it does nothing to further the plot (or lack thereof), and is just awkward. I don't usually visit terminally ill family members of people I just met, unless I work at a hospital. These people have no past, no present, and no future, until Woody Harrelson's character is introduced after a long preview about how he is an ex-punk. All these scenes with "Jango" (Harrelsens' character) are totally pointless and just serve as a villain and an empty shell of stupid along with all the other empty people.I gave this three stars because I did actually finish it, and there was a scene when Zahn becomes a Buddhist monk (I'm not making this up), and I found it particularly touching when another monk was talking about letting go of the past. The scene was beautiful and just gave me a break from the terrible movie I had been watching, and for a moment it was all right.Then I was forced back into the random spiral of nothingness, with Aniston ending up pregnant and unsure of the father. Wow. So Zahn uses the deed to the hotel his mother left him to go to Aniston and plan their homeless shelter together.I bought this for less than a dollar when a store was closing so i can't say I wasted the money. I thought it was a lot older when I watched it, because all the decor is awful, the clothes are awful, and most of the scenes are awful. When I saw it was from 2008 I was shocked. Even the cover looked like it was from the nineties or at least 2000s. There had to have been some explanation for all the bad visuals and just overall bad movie. But alas, it was made two years ago.There were a few laughable moments, but from minor characters that had less of a point.I can understand what they were trying to do with this movie, but I can't understand why anyone would overly like this movie because of all the shallow, random, and plot less things in this movie.There was a good song too. There's another star.