Review of Love Happens (2009) by Reen J — 06 May 2010

Someone forgot to tell the writer, director, marketing team and everyone else involved in this film that this is not a love story. This is not about love happening and quite frankly has nothing to do with love.

This is tale of grief, overcoming grief, dealing with it and how to move on. It does a half-ass job at that but down to its essence this is what the movie is really about and has the (small) ability to be entertaining.

Now, this is also a slow moving but redeemable movie. Partly due to Aaron Eckhart's ability to make his character a compassionate, simple man whose able to channel his energy into helping people despite not being able to help himself.

The movie like I said is very slow and while this can be a good thing, for a film of this nature, this hurts the movie. I found myself at times completely bored. However, once you get down to the point of the film and it reveals Aaron truth (which isn't as shocking as one makes out), it becomes a pretty decent film.

Jennifer Aniston thankfully does not screw this up, partly due to her not being the focus of the film. While her character is not needed, she does manage a rare feat by pulling it off. Joe Anderson, a very talented actor is once again reduced to a "blink-and-you'll miss" part.

I'm a bit bias and therefore believe he should have gotten more scenes and more then two lines of dialogue. Martin Sheen again an extremely talented actor doesn't have much to do except when you see him at the end and even that too brief a moment could have been extended.

While this movie is far too long, including several scenes and characters that could have been eliminated it somehow works. Aaron Eckhart deserves a lot more credit and outweighs the movie's many flaws.

A sad but forgivable tale about death and need for this film to have an editor.