Love Happens

I saw the movie, Love Happens, last night with a bunch of my girlfriends. Though the critics only gave it a C, I thought it was really well done. I might be biased because Jennifer Aniston is my favorite actress of all time. Brad Pitt was an idiot for dumping her for Angelina Jolie, but I won’t get too much into that. Anyways, I thought the movie had a really good message. It wasn’t just a superficial, sappy love story, though I assure you I cried more than once during it, but a meaningful insight into the lives of people who had lost loved ones. The actors portrayed their roles so well I forgot that’s all they really were—especially the male lead, played by Aaron Eckhart. Burke, his character, was a famous author who wrote a bestselling book about dealing with the loss of a loved one and conducted seminars/workshops to help people deal with their grief. His book was centered around how he supposedly got over the death of his wife, three years earlier. What the readers and the workshop-attendees didn’t know was that he had never followed his own advice to grieve and move on. He was pretty much a complete hypocrite. But eventually he comes out with the truth and gets to be with Jennifer Aniston. But the movie is about even more than that. A man who attends the workshop (against his wishes, but he sister insisted he go) lost his twelve year old son, and not long after his job and his wife as a result. He lost so much, and was bitter for so long, but after being stubborn and holding on to his anger and grief for most of the workshop, he figures out how to get his life back—and it is very powerful. I don’t know if I would be able to come back from that.
At any rate, the movie was fantastic and I would recommend it to anyone—boys and girls alike. So I give it an A, against the critics judgement.