Love Happens

He plays Burke Ryan, and the largest lemon he’s been dealt since his parents saddled him with that name is the untimely death of his wife in a series of recurring flashbacks.

And the lemonade? That would be the career he’s forged as a bereavement counselor cum self-help guru (catchphrase: “A-Okay”) in the three years since her passing. Burke teaches full-on mourning, followed by acceptance and healing. He likes to think he’s helping. He’s also on the verge of becoming obscenely wealthy, courtesy of the deal put together by his manager, Lane (Dan Fogler). First, though, he has to pull off a weekend conference to impress his putative new corporate backer – scheduled, to his discomfort, in rainy Seattle, home of his late wife’s parents.

And where is Jennifer Aniston in all this, you’re thinking… Indeed, our Jen has a rather lesser role than the marketing guys would have us believe. She’s Eloise, a florist by day and wacky grafitto terrorist by night – but don’t get too excited, her art consists of scribbling arcane words hidden behind the paintings on hotel walls.

Burke catches her at it, or nearly, and is intrigued enough to ask her on a date. I think you can see where this is headed.

Written and directed by Brandon Camp – whose dad Joe directed the Benji movies – Love Happens features a late cameo from a recalcitrant cockatoo, but could certainly have used a few dog tricks to lighten the load. Camp duly assembles all the clichés of a sentimental romantic comedy but neglects to include anything actually funny. Which is a shame, because as a drama it’s just too hackneyed and shallow to stand up.
 

The problem, I think, is Camp’s reluctance to satirise Burke, a character who pretends he has all the answers, but whose success is built on his own emotional blockage. As Eckhart showed in Thank You For Smoking, he can be mercilessly sharp, given the right cues. His performance here has interesting shadings – we can see the effort Burke puts in to maintain his façade – but the movie seems to share Burke’s fundamental confusion about what he does, and ultimately settles for a sentimental fog.

In a seriously underwritten role Aniston seems unsure what tone she’s aiming for – it’s a lackluster, anodyne turn from a star who seems to have settled for perky mediocrity.
 

In contrast, John Carroll Lynch (you might recognise him from Zodiac) injects a note of stubborn anguish as Walter, a bereaved father who nearly walks out of Burke’s seminar in disgust, and whose resistance brings out the best and the worst in him.

Shot against every tourist landmark Seattle can muster – yup, even Bruce Lee’s gravestone – Love Happens at least attempts to get a handle on honest human emotion, and for that it deserves some credit, but we also go to movies for insight, wit, originality and passion, and all those fronts it comes off as terminally tepid.

Love Happens? I think the more familiar phrase they’re looking for is a very different four-letter word beginning with “S”.