In Love Happens Burke (Aaron Eckhart) has made lemonade out of lemons by writing a book about how to cope with losing a loved one after his wife dies in a car accident. The movie picks up roughly 3 years after the loss of his wife. He is on a seminar tour that brings him back to his old home town of Seattle, Washington (a place where he does not want to be I might add) where he meets Eloise (Jennifer Aniston) a flower shop owner who leaves random large words behind the hotel art that brushes him off by pretending to be deaf. Throughout the course of the movie Eloise forces Burke to come to grips with his lemons and a romance blooms.
I really liked this movie. Aaron Eckhart & Jennifer Aniston had really good on screen chemistry and the storyline was put together very well. There were points in the movie that I thought conversation would have gone quite different in real life, but the raw emotion displayed by Eckhart is refreshingly good. I was also pleasantly surprised that for a romance there was no skin shown. Dan Fogler provides a great supporting role as Burke’s agent (Lane) and makes things light when necessary but you can tell from the way Burke and Lane interact that they have a lot of history and Lane really is looking out for Burke and wants the best for him as evidenced by a last minute meeting before the executive meeting that he has been trying to setup for Burke. Judy Greer brings a solid performance in her usual role as second chair. In Love Happens I would like to see Judy Greer in a leading role, she is funny enough and a solid enough actress that I think she would be able to pull off a leading role. Time will tell though, if she does though, you heard it here first. Finally, Martin Sheen plays the ex-Marine father of Burke’s deceased wife and he knocks it out of the park. I don’t want to give too much story away otherwise I would tell you how, I can say that there is a reason he has been in the business as long as he has.
Grade: B+
Notable Movies for each actor/actress: (I’m going to try listing movies I think are worth seeing, please let me know if you find it useful)
Aaron Eckhart:
Jennifer Aniston:
Dan Fogler:
Judy Greer:
Martin Sheen (as of this writing he has 218 movies and tv appearances on imdb.com but I haven’t seen a lot of the movies, I have mostly seen him on TV):
- The American President
- Spawn – kind of a dark movie, but a comic book movie nonetheless, not sure I should recommend it because they only list the unrated director’s cut which I can only imagine is very dark.
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