Review - Love Happens

Chances Are…

Love Happens

Score: 6,0

When I saw the trailer I loved it. Maybe because of the song. “Better Days” by Goo Goo Dolls. I love the song, the band, etc. But it doesn’t actually play in the movie. I missed it. Anyway, putting all this aside, the picture is directed by Brandon Camp and the screenplay is by Mike Thompson. Nice to meet you… Another attractive feature to me was the cast. I love Jennifer Aniston since Friends’ first episode. I’m still waiting the day she establishes herself in the movie business. She only had 2 or 3 good roles so far. Aaron Eckhart also has my admiration since Thanks For Smoking, The Dark Night, No Reservations and so on. There’s also Judy Greer that generally does movies I like, such as Elizabethtown and 27 Dresses. We just ignore 13 Going on 30...

Eckhart plays this widower who turns the loss of his wife in a kind of diary and then is convinced by his agent to publish it. Then he becomes this sort of celebrity guru, just like a less flamboyant version of Walter Mercado (I don’t know if he is known in the US…) helping people to overcome their problems, spilling all those corny quotes and selling solutions just as those fake religions do. Writing about it I just realized how this could be a great movie. Quackery, religions, lying for oneself, etc. Yeah, it could be really good…

And then comes Jennifer Aniston as the florist working in the hotel he’s promoting a workshop and he makes a move. And then love happens, just as title suggests. But the whole image of strong person he sold is all a lie because he never faced his loss and is not ready to get involved with anyone until he solves his own problems. Hmm… Actually the story is not as interesting as it sounds. Don’t fool yourself.

The problem with love stories like that is that the formula was way done and redone several times. It’s really hard to come up with something new. The common place, the obvious and clichés are what happens to 95% of all these pictures. We can just say what’s about to happen all the time. Nothing surprises us. All the actors are really good but the scrip doesn’t allow them to grow. We can tell a great difference between Judy’s work here and in 27 Dresses. The character is the same, the best friend of the blonde main character. In the other one she was full of life, but here she has nothing to do. There’s also Martin Sheen (from Apocalypse Now, The Departed and The West Wing), father of Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen and the whole bunch… He’s Eckhart’s father-in-law.

It’s a clear case of how edition makes you or breaks you in this business. You can arrange everything however you prefer and turn into an awesome trailer when it’s definitely not a big deal. Or you can chance the subject and turn into something completely different, such as people do on YouTube. I remember this video where Ferris Bueller’s Day Off becomes a gay romance just by doing a recut. I hate this movie by the way. Ferris is such a crook, the kind of person that grows up to become a criminal. I was totally compassionate about his sister. There are another examples of these recut videos here. It’s fun to check out.