Love Happens starts as a pleasantly bland character study and ends as the unequivocal worst romantic comedy of the year. For its first two acts, the film is deceptively sincere in what seems to be an attempt to tell a quiet story of love and redemption, albeit through a conventional lens. Turns out the filmmakers were pulling their punches for an incessant cavalcade of sanctimonious resolutions and nauseating emotional pandering. Love does happen, but the only emotion that happened to me while watching this movie was, to put it mildly, "extreme discomfort."
Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston headline the film, though it is really Eckhart's story, if for no other reason than Aniston is treated as a sideshow. The actress, who has been truly great in past work, is the monotone window dressing to Eckhart's over-emotional lost soul. He plays Burke, a popular self-help guru and megalomaniac-in-the-making who is so out of touch with his own self-empowerment strategies that he downs a few glasses of vodka before each speaking engagement. Aniston is Eloise, a humble florist (yeah, right) who writes large words on hotel walls in neon pink marker. Why? Because it's so pointless, it must be meaningful. But it's not; it's actually just vandalism. Eloise and her big words are clearly Burke's savior, if only he can work out his labyrinthine mess of a screwed up life.
You might be asking yourself, "Haven't we seen this all before?" Why, yes, we have. Love Happens is one of those movies that's made up of the recycled parts of other equally cloying "Wounded Man Lives Contradictory Life" movies, those emotional melodramas where the hero is successful at helping others but is unable to help himself. Burke is a classic Wounded Man: He exudes confidence and wisdom on the outside, but harbors secrets -- deep, dark secrets -- on the inside. We know his wife died in a tragic car accident, but what were the real circumstances behind that crash? Martin Sheen shows up to fill about five total minutes of screen time as Burke's blustering ex-Marine father-in-law, who turns up in the beginning for one scene of aloof disapproval, then pops up again at the end, just in time for the reconciliation, but neither scene reveals anything of substance about the characters as much as they reveal nifty name recognition. "Hey, there's Martin Sheen!" we say at the beginning. Later, we say, "Hey, there he is again! This time he's crying!"
The characters wander about as if there is some grand depth to their presence, but each one is glossed over in such a shapeless manner that we can't begin to care about any of them. Judy Greer, Patron Saint of rom-com best buds, is given such short shrift we barely remember she's in the movie; Dan Fogler dials down his usual manic nature as Burke's publicist, who is simultaneously evil businessman and genuine friend; and the great John Carroll Lynch, as a grieving dad who is skeptical about Burke's self-help axioms, imbues his character with much deeper emotion than the screenplay deserves. Director/co-writer Brandon Camp, in his first feature, shoves the intended power of these characters down the audience's throat at every opportunity. But when they cry, it feels forced. When they speak, it doesn't resonate as even remotely truthful. When Aniston tells Eckhart late in the film that her life is "an everyday experiment in very bad decisions," we don't care, because we don't know anything about this person other than the surface quirks.
Love Happens never hits a successful stride. It merely hovers near the ground while the actors go through the motions. What's extraordinary is how quickly and sharply the film's badness shifts from benign to malignant. In search of some overwrought emotional truth, the film jumps off the deep end of manipulation, with a browbeating of false emotional payoffs that worsen with each successive attempt. As if that weren't enough, the film still isn't over -- it must first detour through a strange side plot involving the theft of an old pet bird (don't ask), then veer back on course just in time for Burke's onstage meltdown where everyone cries, a family reunites, and slow alt-rock swells on the soundtrack. I would say all that's missing is the Slow Clap, but it's got that too.
Something else happens, too.
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