There’s something more than a little creepy about Mike (Steve Zahn), the night manager at his parents’ Arizona motel … something a little Anthony Perkins-in-Psycho creepy.

Mike takes an immediate interest in Sue (Jennifer Aniston) from the moment he sees her, from the rear, checking in.

Soon Mike, who lives in a second-floor room at the motel, is knocking on Sue’s door, giving her a “complimentary” bottle of not-very-good wine. The next night he’s at her door with a bottle of not-very-good champagne, welcoming gifts that we and Sue know are not part of the standard operating procedure at the Kingman Motor Inn.

Sue is not very receptive to Mike’s advances. “You have a great butt,” he blurts out to the disconcerted Sue. One almost expects the shower scene to follow.

But Mike, naïve and clueless at age 34, as well as awkward and nervous around women and also apparently friendless to boot, seems in his timid way, to be fairly harmless. His sad puppy look strikes a chord with the lonely Sue, who travels from town to town peddling bad art.

She’s eco friendly and helps feed the homeless with vouchers from Burger King. Her dream job, she says, is to open a full-service soup kitchen. This may be why she feels — What? Sympathy? Wistfulness? — toward Mike.

In one of the film’s many incredible moments, Sue lunges for Mike in the motel’s laundry room. A seemingly fleeting fling to her, it rings bells inside Mike, who soon gathers up all the money he has in the world to buy a one-way ticket to Baltimore, where Sue lives.

Maybe writer-director Stephen Belber imagined that all this would look romantically kooky on screen. But it comes across as a series of impossible situations strung together by unbelievable characters who, if nothing else, seem not to have been long on this planet.

Mike seems eerily needy. Sue, played by the stone-faced Aniston in an unflattering hairdo, sees the danger in the situation — a relentless stalker with a crush on her. And yet she encourages Mike — taking him along to play on her soccer team or to help hand out hamburger vouchers to homeless men. Although she finds his actions “completely unacceptable,” incredibly, she seems to have a soft spot for him.

For Mike, he sees a glimmer of her sweetness lurking below her tough exterior. Nevertheless, the next day she puts him on a bus back to Arizona.

Yet Mike hasn’t given up the chase, leaving phone messages that aren’t returned, sending her poems. Surprisingly, this touches her on some odd level. She even returns to the Kingman Motor Inn, though she sees no future in living with Mike in the corner room of his parents’ motel.

She sees more opportunity with an old flame, an equally impossible character named Jango (Woody Harrelson), a former Punk Rocker who now raises dogs, lives in not the prettiest town in Washington State and has become a multimillionaire thanks to his organic yogurt business. This is as nutty a collection of ideas as Mike trying to forget Sue by becoming a Buddhist monk or of him parachuting onto Jango’s estate and crash landing into the swimming pool, which is the funniest moment in Management.

The film is supposed to be about people finally becoming adults and following their heart’s desires. It’s a journey of self growth, but you may want to think twice before making this wacky trip.

**Management

Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Steve Zahn, Woody Harrelson, Fred Ward, Margo Martindale.

Rated: R, contains sex, profanity, adult themes.

mjanuson@projo.com