Mike Cranshaw (Steve Zahn) is a 38-year-old man who works as a night clerk and general maintenance man in the motel owned by his mother (Margo Martindale) and father (Fred Ward) in a small Arizona town. He lives in a room there and has no friends. His mother is a people person whereas his father is a quiet loner. She is upset that Mike seems to be stuck in life and unable to pull himself together.
Everything changes for him one ordinary day when Sue Claussen (Jennifer Aniston) checks into the motel. She is a traveling corporate art salesperson for a company in Maryland and is on the rebound from a failed relationship. Wanting to know more about her, Mike takes a bottle of wine to her room, claiming that it is gift from management. She tries to be pleasant with him but is very uncomfortable in his presence. He tells her that he finds her very sexy and is stunned when she surprises him with a special treat that sends him on his way rejoicing. The next day he brings her champagne and the next morning, just before she leaves for Baltimore, they have sex in the motel laundry room. Mike begins a Don Quixote-like quest to convince her that he loves her. She, of course, has a life of her own that does not include him.
Writer and director Stephen Belber has created a very endearing film that contains a delightful mixture of probes on love and nurturing. At the outset, Mike is a childlike dreamer who wants to possess Sue completely and make her his own. She, as he discovers when he flies to Baltimore to visit her, is a very socially conscious woman who gives away a third of her income and spends all her spare time volunteering for a group that feeds the homeless. Sue is also a firm believer in recycling. But she has not dealt with her feelings of sadness and lostness, and she rejects Mike. He returns home to Arizona.
Later, he worries that he has lost her completely when he learns that she is back with her old boyfriend, Jango (Woody Harrelson), an ex-punk rocker who is now a yogurt mogul. They are living together in Aberdeen, Washington. Mike decides to pursue her there and finds his own Sancho Panza in Al (James Liao) who gets him a job and gives him a place to live. There are several more stages to Mike's quest including a stint of four months as a Buddhist monk where he learns about letting go and the suffering that comes with obsessive attachment to people, places, or things.
Jennifer Louden, the "Comfort Queen," has wisely observed, "Self-care is not selfish or self-indulgent. We cannot nurture others from a dry well. We need to take care of our own needs first. Then we can give from our surplus, our abundance." This is something both Mike and Sue learn in the course of this movie. Management is an above-average romantic comedy that explores the changes that two emotionally blocked people must go through on the path to a richer and deeper love than a relationship built on infatuation or convenience.
Special features on the DVD include an audio commentary featuring Steve Zahn and director Stephen Belber, deleted scenes, and a gag reel.
