'Love Happens' lets down cast with cliche material

LOVE HAPPENS — ★★ — Aaron Eckhart, Jennifer Aniston, Dan Fogler; rated PG-13 (vulgarity, profanity, violence, slurs, brief drugs); in general release

It appears that even the makers of "Love Happens" realized just how bland and formulaic their movie was.

To spice things up, they've given their main characters a few quirks. For example, the two leads, played by Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston, are an emotionally repressed self-help guru who can't help himself, and a florist with a penchant for hotel vandalism as well as a big vocabulary.

This particular film doesn't turn into another unpleasant and over-the-top quirk-fest like the Sandra Bullock trainwreck "All About Steve," though. Instead, it becomes a cliche-ridden, treacly drama that trivializes the bereavement process while it makes romance look easy and like a foregone conclusion.

Eckhart stars as Burke Ryan, a bestselling author and widower who's turned his own personal grief into a cottage industry, with help from his best friend and manager, Lane (Dan Fogler). Burke has returned to his former stomping ground, Seattle, where he's holding a seminar and workshops for those who have suffered personal losses.

He's already had a run-in with his former in-laws there. And he's also had an odd sort of run-in with Eloise (Aniston). The lovely flower shop owner has been leaving vocabulary words scribbled on the walls behind hotel paintings. Burke, who's caught her in the act of doing that, is intrigued.

Eloise initially brushes off his advances, but from this inauspicious beginning, a friendship develops. And there's a possibility of more happening, if Burke can get past his emotional baggage.

Eckhart and Aniston do have more chemistry than you might expect, but they deserve better than this painfully obvious material.

The same goes for the film's solid supporting cast, which includes Fogler, Judy Greer as Eloises's froopy assistant, John Carroll Lynch as a shell-shocked father, Frances Conroy as Eloises's mother and Martin Sheen as Burke's embittered father-in-law.

"Love Happens" is rated PG-13 and features sexually suggestive language (slang and other talk), other off-color humor, scattered strong profanity, brief violent content (a fatal traffic accident, seen in flashbacks), derogatory language and slurs, and brief drug content and references (anti-depressants, medications and weight-loss supplements). Running time: 109 minutes.

e-mail: jeff@desnews.com