Movie Reviews: 'Love Happens' and 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' HitFix
19.09.09
"Dearest Happens"
Everything about Brandon Camp's "Love Happens" screams "Generic!" from the meaningless and doughy title -- "Death Happens," "Psychobabble Happens" or "Lazy Screenwriters Cook up d be reconciled Love Happen Even If The Leads Have No Chemistry" -- to the poster with leads Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart trembling in a near-embrace, a positioning meant only to lure female viewers with the promise of a love that hardly happens.
And the movie itself is pretty generic as well, except that it can't decide which of a dozen generic genre movies it wants to be. Mostly, "Angel Happens" is a depressing Vocational Irony Narrative in which Eckhart plays a grief guru who hasn't make heads out how to grieve himself. Because Eckhart's Burke Ryan is a miserable person and he's running grief seminars with other despairing people. Who better to turn his life around than Aniston, playing the oldest Manic Pixie Flight of fancy Girl since Meg Ryan stopped looking like Meg Ryan and Maude tutored Harold. She's all quirky and dizzy and unpredictable and so soon she'll be teaching him how to live life and how to forgive himself and how to... Zzzzzzz.
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