Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart star in the film Love Happens. It is not a romantic comedy, but a romantic drama. There are moments of humor breaking the seriousness.

And a really cute bird.

The script was excellent. We enjoyed the casting and the acting.

The story is about Burke, a widower who is turned into a best-selling self-help guru when he writes a book about coping with loss. He is booked into a seminar in Seattle, against his desires, where his deceased wife’s parents still live.

As you can fill in the blanks, her father (Martin Sheen) confronts him after one of his talks. Meantime, he falls for a woman who does the flowers in the hotel and owns a floral shop. She forces his hand in the nicest possible way to face his wife’s death in much the same way as his wife’s father confronted him.

There is an interesting assortment of people who attend the seminar; some new agey things like walking across hot coals; a man (John Carroll Lynch — excellent!) whose young son died in a construction accident; and more.

I believe this is a film that would be more enjoyable for me the second time around because I would know where things go, but it is not a film I would likely see more than once, though I’m not at all unhappy to have seen it.

I wasn’t sure, if the guru was a fake and scamming. (He isn’t.) He has enough credentials that the pushing he does to get people past an impasse in their lives is not as unwise as it might appear to be.

I liked the relationships between the friends. Judy Greer plays her usual wacky character. Dan Fogler plays Burke’s friend and agent.

We root for some of the seminar participants and hope they find love again which it looks as though they will/are. The end is happy and believable. I especially liked the last scene with Martin Sheen.

It might not be an easy movie to see if you recently lost a loved one — a lover or a young child.

Karin
www.savvythinker.com

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