Love Happens is among the rarest kinds of movies. It’s an intelligent and well-made film, but even more unusual, it’s a romantic comedy about real people with real problems. The characters are fleshed out into human beings, the story follows the trials and imperfections of real life, and the ending is…well, the ending is Hollywood. But let’s not ask for miracles, right? My first impression about the movie was the hilarious irony of the eternally loveless Jennifer Aniston starring in a movie called Love Happens, so it goes without saying that when the movie revealed itself to have some depth to it I was more than pleasantly surprised.
It is, however, definitely a tear-jerker, and it will get a lot of bad press for it. In fact, a quick glance at some of the reviews online will reveal that critics like one Stephanie Zacharek are gleefully bashing the movie for everything from approaching the issue of grieving over the loss of a loved one to Aaron Eckhart playing a character who’s first name is Burke. In her prodigious efforts to protect the sanctity of the formulaic romantic comedy, Zacharek also goes on to complain about first-time director Brandon Camp focusing too much on grief and not enough on the two potential lovers in the movie. Yeah, there’s a good idea. For God’s sake, Mr. Camp, don’t do anything different! This is a romantic comedy! Stick to the happy cutesy crap!
So let me just tell you the story really quick – Burke (Eckhart) is a successful self-help writer who became famous because of the book he wrote while coping with his wife’s accidental death three years earlier. Eloise (Aniston) is a florist who is dating a man that we meet just long enough to learn that he’s cheating on her, and so she finds herself suddenly single again. Burke and Eloise meet, of course, and so begins their amorous journey to the destination that we already know.
It’s the perfect recipe for a cliché-riddled romance, but it’s the characters and the balance of the story that set it apart. Burke never feels like a movie character, he feels like a real man with real emotions and real contradictions. He has truly suffered but he truly helps other people deal with their suffering even though he still hasn’t learned to really deal with it himself. The movie not only takes the time to help us get to know him and his loss, but also to introduce us to the people that he helps. John Carroll Lynch plays one of these people, a man named Walter who lost his son, and he inadvertently turns in what might be the best performance in an already well-acted movie.
Eloise is a little harder to accept, if only because it’s hard to imagine Jennifer Aniston working at a flower shop and dating a hairy greaseball like the guy we meet at the beginning of the movie, but she still feels like a real person dealing with her own kind of loss and trying to size up this new guy trying to make his way into her life. At the very least, the inevitable meet cute is an argument instead of some cheap, manufactured confection, so at least there’s that.
Martin Sheen plays Burke's father-in-law.
But before I go on, let me stop for a second and tell you something about film critics. We have a bit of a bad reputation because our job is literally to get up on a high horse and presume to dictate to you which movies are good and which are bad, so an inherent stigma of self-importance comes with the territory. The only way I have discovered to fend off this negative aspect of film writing is to attempt to bypass popular opinion and give the best analyses of new films that I can (although I admit that there are times that a movie turns me off so badly that I can’t help getting a little too subjective). In this case, it would be easier than you can imagine for me to jump on the bandwagon and bash Love Happens like so many other short-sighted film critics are doing right now, but the movie really deserves better than that.
The reality is that Love Happens is being dragged through the mud for not following all the stereotypes and clichés that are expected of romantic comedies. It makes you feel a little uncomfortable at times, but how do you think the people in the movie feel? I’ve heard a lot of complaints about how the movie manipulates peoples’ emotions, and how people who have suffered real loss would be insulted. Well, I’m going to go ahead and suggest that people who have suffered real loss are going to be touched, for example, by a metaphor that Burke explains early in the movie, about the different emotions you feel when standing at street level compared to standing on top of a building.
As for myself, I have suffered the loss of loved ones, and more times than I care to remember. The last time was barely two months ago. July 27th, 2009, and the reason that date is burned forever into my mind is exactly the same reason that I can understand the emotions that the people in this movie are stuggling to handle. But each time I’ve lost someone, it was a completely different kind of sadness, and every person deals with those different kinds of sadnesses in different ways. And guess what, Love Happens has that right there in the dialogue. This is a rare instance of a movie knowing more about its subject matter than most of the audience (myself included), and it should be praised for it, not derided for having too much product placement. You want flagrant, billboard-over-the-head product placement, go back and watch Journey to the Center of the Earth again. At least it meant something here.
And by the way, why does love never seem to happen to Jennifer Aniston? She's one of the most beautiful actresses working today.
Note: Early in the movie it’s revealed that Eloise has the habit of scribbling bizarre words on the walls behind paintings, like quidnunc (“a person who meddles in the affairs of others”), poppysmic (refers to a lip-smacking sound derived from a now-defunct French word popisme), and my favorite, sesquippedalianist (“someone who routinely uses long words”). Admittedly, my Grandiloquent Dictionary is a little dusty at the moment so all of these words were totally incomprehensible to me, except for that last one. By pure chance, I happen to know very well the word hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, which, I kid you not, means the fear of long words!
Also, when Eloise and Burke first meet, she pretends to be deaf. This is a bit of a digression, I know, but should you be interested in picking up a little American Sign Language, you may find it surprisingly fun and interesting to learn here. In the meantime, go see the movie. It’s about recovery and bringing people together. If only more people could make such healthy messages so entertaining.
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