Release Date: May 15, 2009

(out of 4)

Steve Zahn is the big loser who has never been in love and Jennifer Aniston is the woman that captivates him from afar in "Management." If that doesn't sound too hot for a movie concept you're right – it is generic comedy served lukewarm. For a few moments it has potential but it doesn't take long before it goes humdrum, before it loses its sense of priority (to make us laugh, to make insightful human observations), before it foreshadows a predictable ending coming ninety minutes away. Maybe that's not fair. The feature runs at only ninety-three minutes.

Early on, Mike (Zahn) is a dweeb Arizona motel manager who spots an attractive overnight guest in Sue (Aniston). He makes an awkward encounter when he knocks on her door at night offering her a bottle of wine compliments of the motel. The scene is made more awkward when he offer to open the bottle for her and struggles to have that done. Bad conversation ensues but Sue remains patient and genial nonetheless.

Sue, an art sales rep, is in town on business but her demeanor is indifferent, rigid and listless. Nothing about her life is special, so when Mike knocks on her door to offer her a bottle of wine she accepts despite the transparency of a hidden agenda. What exactly does this guy Mike want? Oh, that! Sue has no interest in being Mike's girlfriend but she does have a veiled experimental personality. Letting him have one little copped feel can't hurt, right? But the next day Mike pesters her for a real date.

No date but Mike gets a tryst with Sue that is played out with knockabout slapstick. It can be analyzed that Sue is playing with Mike's emotions once you accept that Sue is not really attracted to this uneducated guy who, um, has no hobbies. But possibly, the script has a chance of doing something original with this beginning. See, the potential could have been exploring Aniston's character as a lonely woman out to overpower a dimbulb guy, to overcome the lack of power she has going on in the rest of her doldrums life.

Not before long, the movie goes soft and sentimental – one immature guy's trek to make impossible love into something attainable. Mike takes a leave of absence from work ( it's okay, the motel is owned by his parents) so he can chase Sue around all over the country. First in Maryland. Out of pity, Mike gets permission to tag-along with Sue on her daily routines. When Sue relocates to Washington without warning, Mike goes there too with unsatisfying results. Mike finds that she is bound for marriage to a loutish yogurt industry mogul played by Woody Harrelson doing a blend of Woody Boyd and Larry Flynt in one, with a touch of rock n' roll rebellion in him – the idea is he's rich but shallow and reckless. Nothing stops Mike in believing that he can't better himself in order to prove his love to Sue. Mike gets a job in a Chinese restaurant and then attempts Buddhism unsuccessfully. The movie is half-hearted, like its protagonist.

Romantic comedies can work if the characters in them are interesting, but Zahn's character is one of the least interesting you'll ever meet. “Management” is a dull and flat comedy, but its biggest crime is that it knows nothing about the real world. The movie makes large leaps of faith look easy, makes cross-country trips on no credit cards look easy, and makes unemployment look easy too. Movie also doesn't have the regard to its audience for ending its final scenes in a soup kitchen that the characters talk about. Why share the idea of a soup kitchen if you're not going to take the movie there?

Our two stars have zesty comedic juice that is absent entirely here. Zahn (“That Thing You Do!”, “Joy Ride”) has an offbeat charm but has never gone this insipid. Aniston (“Marley & Me,” “Friends with Money”) has usually been good at selecting cheerful roles but she's never chosen as dinky a project before as this one. These actors must have a seen the sign of a bad project as soon as they arrived on location and saw that they would be filming at a shoddy run-down motel nobody would be interested in visiting. Aniston and Zahn did no favors to themselves or to their fans with this one.