Eckhart stars as Burk Ryan, PhD, a widower three-years-past who writes a self help book as a means of coping with his wife’s death. The book unexpectedly becomes a bestseller and turns Burk into a celebrity self-help maven.
As the film opens, Burk has just arrived in Seattle to conduct a self-help course; after the first lecture, he bumps into Eloise near the elevators by happenstance and then runs into her again in the hotel lobby.
Eloise is a single young florist with a penchant for making bad decisions in her love life. She is at first unimpressed with Burk, even feigning a handicap to elude him. Burk however, is smitten from the start, even after discovering Eloise’s ruse. After catching her rock-singer boyfriend cheating and, following another chance, decidedly hostile encounter with Burk, she begins warming to him.
I’ve read complainants that Aniston and Eckhart lack chemistry but, to my thinking, the problem isn’t a lack of chemistry but a lack of quality screen time between the pair. Audiences may be surprised that the true focus of Love Happens isn’t the relationship between Burk and Eloise. Instead, the film centers more on Burk’s personal struggle with grief, more on his self-delusion and dishonesty in dealing with that grief.
There are also a few subplots involving the group of attendees to Burk’s self-help seminar and although those are interesting, this is really Eckhart’s film. He’s a fine actor (as demonstrated in The Dark Knight), but the film suffers for its one-sided focus. Though Love Happens presses all the right emotional buttons in all the right places, it’s difficult to create good romantic drama with just one character; for Love Happens, one is indeed the loneliest number.
Score: 4/10
Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Jennifer Aniston, Dan Fogler, Judy Greer, Joe Anderson, John Carroll Lynch, Martin Sheen
Directed by: Brandon Camp
Released by: Universal Pictures
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