Tags : Aaron Eckhart, Dr. Burke Ryan, Eloise Chandler, jennifer aniston, Jennifer Aniston Love Happens, love happens, love happens movie review
Movie Review: Love Happens
Our response to the title of this romantic drama? True, but not between us and the movie.
Love Happens (which carried a working title of Brand New Day during production) is a character-driven tearjerker about two people who are the main obstacles to their own romantic relationship.
That’s because each feels that (s)he has met the right person but at the wrong time. No surprise there, when you consider that each has decided that any time is probably the wrong time.
Aaron Eckhart portrays Dr. Burke Ryan, the best-selling author and self-improvement guru whose specialty is helping people grieving to confront their pain and emotionally recover from the loss of a loved one.
Would that he, a widower still reeling from the death of his wife — which motivated him to write his best-selling self-help manual, “A-Okay” — could take his own advice.
He arrives in Seattle to face a sold-out getting-over-grief seminar audience and meets Eloise Chandler, played by Jennifer Aniston, a disillusioned floral designer and flower shop owner who works for the hotel hosting the seminar and who has just ended a problematic romantic relationship with yet another undependable man.
Over a long weekend, they struggle with their new beginning while trying to make sense of what has happened before.
Debuting director Brandon Camp (who wrote the screenplay for Dragonfly and whose father Joe created the dogged Benji franchise), co-wrote the screenplay with Mike Thompson. Their script is drenched in sadness and the film sustains that mood throughout, but there are just too many directions the narrative doesn’t quite go in and not nearly enough suspense of any kind along the way. The combination of abandoned plot strands, misleading indications, arbitrary personality quirks, unsurprising surprises, and overly familiar cliches eventually wears us down.
Aniston and Eckhart are charming and accomplished performers. But their chemistry here is minimal, and although their performances in underdeveloped roles are technically sound, the tug between their characters never presents itself in a way that makes us buy the relationship, even though we may root for it.
The supporting cast — including Martin Sheen as Burke’s angry father-in-law, Dan Fogler as Burke’s aggressive manager and publicist, Judy Greer as Eloise’s opinionated employee, and John Carroll Lynch as a reluctant grieving attendee — is competent enough. But although each has a moment or two to shine, none manages to shed much light on the main relationship, which is, after all, the point here.
LH is not an unpleasant viewing experience, but it’s not a rewarding one either. And what is unpleasant is the outrageous product placement throughout, which sometimes makes this weepie seem downright creepy.
Perhaps the most appropriate target audience are viewers actually dealing with grief who can embrace the film as a form of vicarious therapy and thus don’t have as much invested in its quality as drama.
Stuff happens in the not-quite-happening rom-dram, Love Happens, just not enough of the right stuff.
By: Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic – Via AHN
110 minutes – In theaters September 19, 2009 – Rating: PG-13, Drama
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