Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
10/4/09
Serious
moviegoers (fans of serious movies, as opposed to those who seriously saw
Transformers
2 35 times) obsess over endangered genres like a naturalist fretting
the fate of the Spotted Owl. High on the list is the Romantic Drama,
the straight-faced counterpart of those movies where Matthew McConaughey
makes a bet he can get Kate Hudson to do something and they fall in love.
Does that mean Romantic Dramas can't be contrived? Of course not,
it just means they try to deal with recognizable human emotions and issues
in between the contrivances, and tend to give their actors more to do.
All of the above is true of Love Happens, the feature directorial
debut of Brandon Camp, who ladles on the contrivances (especially down
the stretch), but also gets a very strong performance from Aaron Eckhart
and makes a few real emotional connections before the credits roll.
All without a single bet.
Burke
Ryan (Aaron Eckhart) is a best-selling author whose book “A-OK” recounts
how he came to terms with his grief after the death of his wife.
He travels the country doing seminars where he helps others with their
own issues, but the current stop is one he didn't want to make. His
manager Lane (Dan Fogler) insists on Seattle, where the Ryans lived, because
it gives him a chance to negotiate a major deal with a media conglomerate
that envisions Burke as the Oprah of grief (sample product: a diet
powder with the tagline “Finally, a loss you can feel good about!”).
Looking for something to distract himself from his memories and the looming
specter of his bitter Father-in-Law (Martin Sheen), Burke starts a tentative
relationship with Eloise (Jennifer Aniston), a florist with bad luck in
relationships. She likes the idea of a guy who's only going to be
in town for a few days. But it soon becomes clear that the story
from his book doesn't track, and Burke Ryan will have to decide if he can
only help grieving clients like Walter (John Carroll Lynch) face their
grief, or if he can ever really face his own.
You
can make 100 different movies about a guy with Burke's job description
and in all hundred, he'll be some kind of fraud. But what makes
Love Happens interesting is it's the one in a hundred where the only
kind of fraud he's guilty of is hypocrisy. He really does want to
help the people who come to his seminars, not the least because he knows
exactly how hard it is to be unable to move beyond the loss of a loved
one. As such, the relationship in the movie that resonates most is
not the one he has with Eloise, but instead his efforts to draw out Walter,
the traumatized contractor who lost his son to an accident for which he
blames himself. Lynch, whose career has caught fire since his stunning
work in Zodiac, sells every angle on his character,
not just the trauma, but also the fact that this is the last guy you'd
expect to see at any kind of self-help seminar. Burke goes the extra
mile, even standing on hot coals, to convince him to give life a chance
again, but the solution he finally comes up with is so wonderfully acted
by both parties that it didn't occur to me for a moment that it's also
a pretty brazen piece of product placement.
What
makes the romantic drama genre easier to swallow than its' comedic counterpart
is that two good actors can pretty much always sell you on themselves as
a couple as long as the script doesn't make them act like idiots.
Aniston fits well with Eckhart, and Eloise is a solid character for his
story. She too really wants to help, but doesn't know anything about
how that works and is perfectly willing to be pushed away if that's how
he wants to play it. A mutual loneliness draws them to each other,
but this isn't the pivotal weekend in Burke's recovery because he meets
a really great girl: I could just as easily imagine them not being
a couple a month after the movie's events without either of them thinking
that was such a bad thing. Which isn't to say that they make a bad
couple, instead that the coupling doesn't get in the way of the story.
Alas,
Camp is determined to end with a bang, and everything he does when Burke's
past, present and future converge at the final event of the seminar feels
wrong (including, horror of horrors, a “slow clap” sequence). It's
pretty much impossible to imagine that anyone, let alone the savvy media
types who're waiting to close that deal, would think what happens wasn't
staged. But beyond that issue is that after establishing that his
future employers are heartless money-grubbers, writers Camp and Mike Thompson
simply forget about it, and we're left with a sense that Burke should still
hope he gets his own magazine. Luckily, a couple of quiet scenes
after this meltdown help to salvage things a bit.
Eckhart
is a master of characters who seem (and generally are) too good to be true.
He plays the facade and reality of Burke with the skill necessary to make
someone on the run from their own feelings an engaging protagonist.
Aniston does a nice job keeping a character written with a few more quirks
than necessary real (the business where she writes long words on hotel
walls might mean something, but it escaped me). Fogler makes the
most of an atypical role as the manager who wants to grab every penny for
Burke but is also genuinely his friend. And Judy Greer does a good
job with a role she could play in her sleep: the sassy sidekick for
our hero (one of these days, I'd love to see HER get the guy). And
Sheen adds the expected gravitas to a role that could really have used
a name (yes, the credits really do list him as Burke's Father-In-Law).
Love
Happens doesn't always know what to do with its' characters, but the
first requirement of drama is to have them in the first place, and there
it is a solid success. Fans of the actors will get their money's
worth, and more sentimentally included viewers who're willing to swallow
the climax should be doubly impressed. As Serious Moviegoers
know these days, beggars can't be choosers: catch a solid fall romantic
drama while you still can. |
