Management
A few years ago, Jennifer Aniston won raves for her portrayal of a lonely woman looking for a bit of happiness in The Good Girl. It was a breakout performance that showed she had a bit more range than people ever gave her credit for. Since then, she's done little to build on that, and some saw Management as her chance to recapture some of that former glory. Unfortunately a weak plot and shallow script do little to aid her in that quest. Here she plays Sue, a serious, orderly woman with aspirations of making a real change in the world through humanitarian efforts. On a business trip, she happens to stay at a hotel run by Mike Crenshaw(Steve Zahn) and his parents. Mike is a disheveled, aimless, man-child who is instantly smitten by Sue. He offers her a bottle of warm champagne, courtesy of the "management", and the two have a brief fling that neither expects to go much further. Sue returns to her very structured, prepared life in Maryland, but Mike is never able to get over her, and so he follows her there, only to discover that she has no place for a wanderer like him.
This is where it should end, but Mike to put it bluntly comes off a bit like a stalker. When she moves to Washington state, he follows her there also, literally dropping in to her life and destroying everything around him. Sue is set to be married to her ex-punk turned yogurt enthusisast Jango(Woody Harrelson), with hopes of running one of his charities. Mike ofcourse, doesn't let this stand and basically throws a molotov cocktail on all of her dreams in hopes of having her for himself.
There are some sweet moments to be found here. Their initial courtship is awkward but cute. Zahn and Aniston show a little bit of chemistry together in those opening scenes together, but as the story goes on there seems to be less and less reason for them to be a couple. Sue in particular shows nothing that makes her appealing outside of her looks, and frankly Aniston lacks the charm to bring more to the character. Mike appears to be a nice guy, but comes off more stalker-ish than dedicated. What's worse, the film devolves into lame rom-com cliché, instantly turning Sue's boyfriend Jango into a creep just because that's what the story demands. Management is probably best as a rental to be seen with your girlfriend or something, otherwise you can probably skip it.
5/10
The Girlfriend Experience
I sat three seats away from Rian Johnson(director of Brick, The Brothers Bloom) while watching this the other day, and I kept trying to judge his body language. Was he as bored of this mess as I was? Normally I'm intrigued by Soderbergh's experimental, hands off approach to storytelling. Here, I just found myself wanting to escape. The experience was only amplified by the fact that I had just seen the marvelous The Brothers Bloom mere minutes before(review of that to come). I'm starting to think that Soderbergh is sacrificing any coherent narrative in favor of just being experimental.
Porn star Sasha Grey plays high priced escort, Chelsea. Chelsea makes a lot of money, and has an exclusive clientele. She also has a boyfriend, Chris, a personal trainer attempting to build his own fitness clothing line. Chris and Chelsea have an understanding. He accepts her job, but she can't get personally invested in her clients. Chelsea's starting to get hit hard by the economy, as this film takes place during the run up to the Presidential election. In fact, all anybody seems to talk about is the economy. She's also being pressed hard by a new up 'n coming(no pun intended) escort named Tara who is plucking away her best clients. Is Chelsea getting too old for the biz? Is she not interesting enough?
Frankly I don't give a damn. There's a point in the film where a blogger on "erotic services" doing a story on Chelsea writes that she is completely uninteresting. I wonder if the writers of the film knew how right he was! Sasha Grey I'm sure has shown far more emotion while in the midst of her typical line of work than she ever does here. She's lifeless, emotionless, each attempt at a smile is strained and unconvincing. I'm sure faking it works wonders over at Vivid Video, but it don't fly so well on the big screen. The scenes with her boyfriend are particularly painful, watching two non-actors flop around for feelings like a fish on the hot pavement.
If Soderbergh has a point for this film I'd like to know what it was. I have nothing against the escort business, so let's not think for a second that the material is the problem. I find the basic idea intriguing. I think I would've liked to have seen more focus on Chelsea and Chris's failing relationship. How does her job affect them on a daily basis? How does he feel about it? We never really get that. In fact the two are only on screen together a couple of times, and we only see it blow up but not the slow boil. That's what interests me. All this crap with random people talking about how bad the economy is does nothing for me. It adds nothing to the story here. If the point is to show that everybody's screwed right now then that could've been accomplished in a scene, not ten. I appreciate the lengths Soderbergh is going to push the limits, to try new things, but I have to admit that I miss the guy who made Traffic. The guy who made Out of Sight. I'll take that guy who knew how to create interesting, 3-d characters in unique situations over this guy who just takes the camera and points it somebody. I'm over simplifying, obviously, but that's what this movie felt like to me. Like someone just put a camera in front of Sasha Grey and said "Act like an escort", and she couldn't pull it off.
3/10
