Love Happens means well and tries so hard that you can’t help but feel a little sorry for it as it falls completely flat. Burke Ryan (Aaron Eckhart) is a celebrity grief self-help guru who maybe isn’t as all-knowing as he projects. Something is eating away at him until he becomes involved with the quirky Eloise Chandler (Jennifer Aniston), who forces him to confront his past in order to rebuild his future. The movie admirably aims for something more than the light fluff of the typical romcom and is occasionally touching, but gets so bogged down in cliches and stiff dialogue that it ultimately fails. When your biggest emotional scenes revolve around releasing an animal into the wild (which would have died, by the way, come first winter) and a climactic slow clap, you know you’re in trouble. I mean, seriously, a slow clap? Really?
This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2010.