Although I'll be the first to admit that women can be a bit of a puzzle, when it comes to a man's pursuit of our oh-so-confounding species, there really are a few things that should be common sense. For instance, if a girl reluctantly shares your bad bottle of wine and refuses to give you her digits when you say goodbye, there really is no need to track her down. If you fly across the country and show up unannounced at said girl's work, you are more likely to receive a restraining order than a second date. And if your next appearance involves you parachuting into her boyfriend's pool, let's just say that being shot by a b.b.-gun shouldn't come as much of a surprise. But as much as indifference, rejection, and assault should generally be taken as signs that this relationship's one that is just not meant to be, as the independent romantic comedy Management proposes, sometimes they are not.

Starring a drab and uptight Jennifer Aniston as corporate art-buyer Sue Claussen and an immature and directionless Steve Zahn as Mike Cranshaw, the night manager of the family-run hotel where Sue stays on her way through Arizona, Management immediately sets itself apart from the standard romantic comedy in that both of its main characters seem like people who might actually exist in the real world. Neither extraordinarily beautiful and wealthy nor distinctively quirky and unique, Sue and Mike are really just average, ordinary, and, well, unremarkable. When they first meet, they are just two people stuck in relatively solitary and motionless existences with no real motivation or know-how to change that. As Mike recklessly chases after Sue even when all signs tell him not to, he reveals the little piece inside us all so desperate for a life of meaning and value that it knows no logic. And as Sue continues to push Mike away, she reveals the portion of us all that just as stubbornly clings to systems of logic and value that barely keep us afloat for fear that what we actually need might not hold us up at all.

In a nutshell, Management is the story of a woman who could care less about a man, a man who pretty much devotes his whole life to winning her, and the journey they each take separately and together to figure out who they are and what they need. From an awkward nightcap in Sue's hotel room to a late night serenade outside of an ex-punk's mansion, the film is filled with its fair share of goofy attempts to make a relationship that isn't be. Jumping from Mike's mother's bedside in Arizona to Sue's mother's house in Virginia—with stops at a Buddhist monastery, a Chinese restaurant, and yogurt mogul's mansion in between—their journey is one that recognizes that personal realizations are much more likely to resemble a sunrise than a light bulb. And pushing past what seem like points of no return only to still bring its characters to the roads they need to take, the film is one that acknowledges that the search for value need never be called until we have actually found it.

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