Love Happens

2009 terrorist attack

Rating: 7/20 (Dylan: 4/20)

Plot: Poor Mitch. Or whatever his name is. After his wife dies in an automobile accident, Mitch becomes a self-help guru, touring and writing books in order to help people move on after the loss of their loved ones even though he's far less than an expert in that category. While in Seattle, the hometown of his wife's parents and her parrot, he meets Jennifer Aniston and decides that having sex with her might help him to forget the past.

This movie starts with the cliche about making lemonade when life hands you lemons. I think the line (and subsequent similar banalities) is meant to show that Aaron Eckhart's character's self-help advice is trite and superficial. Still, it's a bad start to the movie. Actually, it might be the perfect start for this movie, an hour-and-a-half-or-so full of hackneyed drivel and predictable sludge. I stopped assuming Jennifer Aniston will eventually make a good movie a long time ago. She's the same character that she always is, and cute to the point where she becomes a real distraction. I don't know who this Aaron Eckhart fellow is, but he's got the range of a telephone pole. Love Happens' worst crime is when it spontaneously turned into a commercial for Home Depot. At that point, I turned to the guy sitting next to me on the plane (a guy who was on the first leg of a 26 hour trip to somewhere in the Middle East [or Middle Earth? I think he might have said Middle Earth.]) and said, "Can you believe this crap?" He opened his eyes and said, "Please stop talking to me. I really need to sleep." The best thing about this movie was probably the bird. And unfortunately, the bird wasn't even very good.