Love Happens Sucks

Sometimes you don't realize how much you hate a movie until you sit down and write the review for it.

Love Happens
PG-13 (maybe G? Who the fuck cares, they only kiss once in the entire film)

Love happens or does it? If it were up to Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart to demonstrate this, it appears that it doesn’t. The film centers on the life of Burke Ryans (Aaron Eckhart), a self-help author whose expertise is overcoming the death of a loved one. Unbeknownst to his fans is the fact that though he is able to teach them how to deal with their sadness, he is unable to deal with his own. His knight in shining armor comes in the form of Eloise (Jennifer Aniston) whose presence forces him to come to terms with what he’s spent his life avoiding.

The trailer for the film basically explains the entire synopsis but the attitude of the film isn’t nearly as light-hearted as it would appear to be. Love Happens is a depressing and poorly written film disguised as a romantic comedy. Every moment of happiness is immediately foiled by the random surge of depression that just oozes from Burke Ryans. Sure he has a great smile and is fantastic at being charming; perhaps his character is suppose to be that way but it surely isn’t pleasant to watch. He mostly just comes off awkward when he’s not his public persona.

Even worse is the character of Eloise, pronounced E-loo-ise, whose quirkiness and free-spirited attitude is reflected in her physical surroundings but is absolutely unbelievable coming from Jennifer Aniston. Of all the annoying ways the writers have tried to make her interesting, the most annoying is the fact that she uses a lavender marker to write obscure words behind paintings at the hotel she provides floral arrangements for. Why she does this is never explained, it’s just written in to force an initial attraction to an otherwise boring woman. Why Jennifer Aniston was chosen to play the part of a “free-spirit” is a complete mystery. She is rigid and uptight despite the fact that she drives a live-action version of the mystery machine” from Scooby-Doo and does unpredictable things for Burke on their dates.

At this point, both the characters are boring, so maybe, just maybe they have a connection through their boringness. Unfortunately, even that is missing. Both Aniston and Eckhart get upstaged not only by their co-stars, Martin Sheen, Judy Greer, and Dan Fogler, they are also upstaged by a parrot. Yes, a parrot. It is the only part of the film where anything remotely happy happens.

Love Happens is actually only ten percent about the relationship between Burke and Eloise. Its mostly just about Burke and his internal struggle with awkwardness and not being able to handle his own issues. There is no love in love happens. Watch this film if you love extremely slow movies with a predictable plot, boring characters, and non-stop backdrops of hotel rooms, it’ll be the only love that happens in the screening room.