Love Happens

– One and a half stars (out of four)
– Rated PG-13 for some language including sexual references.
– Who’s going to like it: people who enjoy intentional emotional manipulation and sappy Lifetime Network made-for-television movies.

Completely mistitled. Should be titled Nothing Happens.

Love Happens is an all-around conflicted tale. Let’s start with the title. Love Happens. With a title like Love Happens, you’d expect it to be a romantic film – but it’s not. Why it’s titled Love Happens is absolutely unknown to me. Love doesn’t happen because that’s not what the movie is about. Trailers show Love Happens as a romantic comedy with Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Anniston, which is misleading.

Love Happens stars Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight, Thank You For Smoking) as self-help grievance guru Burke Ryan. Burke is one of the most successful grievance counselors because he lost his own wife three years prior to the film’s beginning. He’s on his way to becoming the next Dr. Phil. Love Happens starts when Burke begins one of his conventions in Seattle, Washington – the hometown of his now-deceased wife. Upon starting the convention, Burke bumps into the unnecessarily quirky hotel florist Eloise (Anniston, Friends and The Break-Up). And here is where the film becomes utterly conflicted.

Instead of doing what it advertises – showing a relationship flourish between Burke and Eloise – it starts telling multiple disconnected stories. Story #1 – Burke and Eloise. They go on a few dates, but nothing romantic, mostly just hanging out. Story #2 – The convention. For some reason, the screenwriters thought we should see Burke work his magic. There’s a really long, boring, manipulative and predictable plot (I would call it a sub-plot, but it’s much too big to simply have the prefix “sub” attached to it) involving the grieving father of a deceased child. Story #3 – The In-Laws. Burke’s angry in-laws (played in part by Martin Sheen) live in Seattle, so they angrily enter the story just to overexpose the already visible Story #4 – Burke is guru just to hide the fact that he hasn’t learned to cope with the loss of his own wife. Loop back to Story #1 – Eloise discovers this and decides to help him cope. That’s why there’s no romance. She’s too busy trying to fix Burke. The end.

Love Happens feels like Lifetime Network original programming. I wouldn’t watch that stuff on television for free, let alone pay to see it in theaters. Unless you enjoy this kind of stuff, I recommend you avoid it too.

Photo credit: Universal Pictures