Love Happens

All originality in "Love Happens" goes right out the window immediately when the film trots out the hoary old adage about lemons and lemonade. This is a by the numbers romantic dramedy with lots of shots of characters staring off into space and the camera pulling back up up and away.

Aaron Eckhart is aself help guru poised to hit the big time and slogging his way through yet another seminar helping closed off people get over their grief. But surpise suprise he's still not quite over the death of his wife three years back.
Jennifer Aniston is a florist he meets in the hotel. She's fresh out of yet another dysfunctional relationship and they fall for each other.
You can pretty much tell where its going to go from here, and it pretty much follows the playbook with no surprises. But to my shock I found myself not quite hating it as much as I expected to.

If you can get past a couple of eyeball rolling romantic comedy sequencesAaron Eckhart is an appealing lead and he gives his underwritten part an appeal it doesn't deserve. And there's a little chemistry with Aniston too. The film calls on her to emote somewhat, but mostly she's just looking vaguely annoyed and twitching her nose in reaction shots.

I can't really recommend this film, but if your significant other wants to drag you to the theatre, you could do a lot worse.

"Love Happens:" C