Angelina Jolie Takes A Salt Slice

Angie, i need u to stop blubbering, ’cause you freak me out when you do. And oh, keep the other cuff on the next time…

One of Jennifer’s review for Mangement:

A week from now, no one will be talking about “Management,” and that’s an easy guess, because no one is talking about it even now. With “Star Trek, “Angels and Demons” and “Terminator Salvation” sucking all the available oxygen at the multiplexes, the only real chance “Management” ever had was to be a masterpiece, and, like most movies, it just isn’t.

Yet, before waving hello and goodbye to it (simultaneously), we really should pause and pay our respects, because this movie does something that only two or three movies to date have done: It gives Jennifer Aniston a chance to show that she’s a real-live actress, not just a light comedy personality or some tabloid poster girl for romantic disappointment. What’s more, Aniston makes use of the chance, without taking shortcuts or falling back on charm.

It’s a tricky role. She plays Sue, a successful saleswoman, working for a company that manufactures the sort of non-art art that you see on the walls of motels. Something in Aniston’s manner suggests that Sue is very good at her job but knows the job is pretty meaningless, and that combination results in a realistic and slightly rueful take on everything Sue experiences.

On a business trip, she spends two nights in a motel in Kingman, Ariz., where she meets Mike (Steve Zahn), who manages the place. Ostensibly, the hapless, lovelorn Mike is the focus of the movie, and yet almost everything we know about him, we get from watching Aniston’s measured reactions.

A lesser actress would have played Sue as a woman who immediately recognizes the good man underneath Mike’s hapless facade but Aniston holds back, and from that we understand a whole unspoken history of guys who never measured up. And we see why this one might not measure up either.

When it comes to movies, one’s looks are one’s destiny, which is why Aniston has been consistently cast in chirpy, adorable parts. But, in truth, Aniston’s emotional address has always had more to do with sorrow and dignified restraint, the humble watchfulness of an average, passive person.

If Aniston has a gift, it’s that she embodies a sort of exalted averageness, and she has maintained this gift despite the paparazzi that camp outside her door. It’s that quality that made her the platonic ideal of Girlfriend when she first came on the scene - even the lowliest guy could imagine her liking him - and it’s that quality that could still easily fuel an important screen career.

Every generation, after all, needs its screen exemplars of what it’s like just to be a person in the world.

In the meantime, there’s “Management,” painless and predictable, with an amusing if overwrought featured performance by Woody Harrelson, as Sue’s ex-boyfriend, and Zahn, stumbling and engaging, as a fellow with nothing to offer any woman but boyish devotion.

They’re fine, but it’s Aniston who does all the emotional heavy lifting, raising borderline cliche scenes to the level of art. Watch how she conveys an adult’s understanding of the limits of life and the limits of herself. Then watch her slowly regain her belief.

“Management” is just an average movie, but Aniston’s performance is a very lovely thing.

121 jasmine @ 05/24/2009 at 11:05 pm

Oh you mean that joke of an award that she don’t deserve and was given to her as a pity award. We all know that woman has not contributed anything toward women in film or diversity but yet she is getting an award about that….oh please

The Worlds Tired of Jennifer @ 05/24/2009

love the article, thanks for sharing!

hahaha Jasmine you brought over a extremely rare positive review of her acting, God bless you.
He/she is right though she is nothing but average.

am i mistaken to believe you take that article as a compliment, jasmine? if you do, you are as delusional as jen-da-man. apart from the pity last comment, the article really is very insulting to your idol.

No one is posting on the old hag’s thread!

Even her deadbeat trolls are tired of her!

They don’t care that she has gone into hiding. They are secretly hoping she will hide forever so they no longer have to be embarrassed, that is why they aren’t interested in finding out where she is.

It’s a hard life being a dumb troll!

Bwahahahahahahahahaha, trolls are thinking that Aniston’s averageness is a compliment? WTF, with fans like these trolls who needs friends? Stupidity they name is X-trolls.

Trolls= IDIOTS

jasmine @ 05/24/2009 at 11:15 pm
******************************************************************************************

Tell whoever wrote that review to do Fugly a favor and buy 10,000 tickets. That might help her anemic box office total, which as of now stands at a whopping $508,000 a week after its release.
.
Sorry, honey, but Management laid an egg.

X is getting more plastic surgery.

joe - she most certainly did say that you cry baby.