Death Happens

Love Happens
Directed by Brandon Camp. Starring Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston.
2/5 stars

Love Happens is a grossly mistitled film as it is largely about death. In fact, the third thought I had about the film after seeing it was that it really should’ve been called Death Happens (which gets funnier the more I think about it). My first thought was how much I enjoyed the film’s music, and the second one concerned my admiration for Aaron Eckhart, but I’ll get to those soon enough.

But it’s true: despite expectations and the film’s misleading previews, Love Happens is not a romantic comedy. It’s a depressing drama interspersed with mildly comedic bits and concludes with what I suppose would technically be considered a romance, although I think infatuation, not love, best describes the characters’ feelings for each other by film’s end.

Cleft-chinned Aaron Eckhart is Burke Ryan, a self-help writer whose book A-Okay aids people through their grief over the death of loved ones, which he wrote based on his own experiences after losing his wife in a car accident. While conducting one of his self-help seminars in a Seattle hotel, he encounters a florist named Eloise (Jennifer Aniston), who is more or less a mean-spirited bitch when we first meet her: Burke asks her out for a coffee, with just enough of the ol’ Eckhart charm and the classic Eckhart smile, and she turns him down by pretending to be deaf. He responds with the middle finger and she accuses him of chauvinism, the film’s attempt at sexual tension. You see, there’s really not that much romance here after all.

The problem is, while Burke preaches healing and helps others through their pain and fears, he hasn’t yet conquered his own pain and fear that resulted from his wife’s death. He disapproves of drinking as a grieving tool yet is a closet drunk himself. His hypocrisy and Dr. Phil-like façade are clichéd, and the film itself can’t decide whether to mock him or sympathize for him because of it, but Eckhart does what he can with the material and gives a decent performance, proving once again how good of an actor he really is. It’s the facial expressions and body language he does best, especially with highly troubled characters.

Eloise, although upfront about her feelings for Burke from the start (or near-start, if you include their bickering over her fake impairment), nevertheless spends the bulk of the film as his friend, assisting him while he tries to deal with his agony. The film is therefore, at the very least, able to avoid many of the sillier banalities of romance flicks. Eventually, of course, Burke is able to fight off his demons, and the film ends with Eloise accepting a more sincere date proposal from him.

Jennifer Aniston does a competent job but, then again, this role is not outside of her comfort zone. Why Aniston is always wearing a tuque, scarf, and winter jacket throughout the film when it clearly isn’t cold outside is beyond me.

Some of the best moments occur within a sub-plot about one of Burke’s self-help seminar attendees. John Carroll Lynch (Zodiac, Fargo) delivers a powerful performance as a man who lost his son in a construction-site accident, and his scenes with Eckhart really are touching. The rest of the supporting cast is meant to be the comedic relief, but Dan Fogler as Burke’s manager isn’t funny enough, and Judy Greer as Eloise’s friend isn’t funny at all, just downright annoying instead. Martin Sheen is Burke’s father-in-law and gives a Martin Sheen-like performance in his ten minutes of screen time, neither redeeming the film nor hindering it further; he’s just…there.

Oddly, I was most impressed by the music and the score. There are delightful and fitting songs from indie rock vets The Postal Service, Rogue Wave, and Eels, among others, that fit the tone perfectly, and award-winning composer Christopher Young has conducted both upbeat and melancholic compositions that really stand out.

So Love Happens has a few emotive and tender moments but is mostly trite. There are some standout performances but the acting is mediocre overall. The soundtrack is top notch but that’s about it, unless I wanted to compliment the film’s producers and location scouts for the beautiful Vancouver scenery that poses as Seattle, but that seems to be going out of my way to commend an otherwise bad movie with an even worse title.

Just skip the film and download the soundtrack.