Love Happens (2009 film)

Love Happens is a 2009 American romantic drama film written by Mike Thompson and Brandon Camp, directed by Camp, and starring Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston.

The story follows therapist and self-help author Burke Ryan, secretly grieving widower, who finally finds love again with the slightly jaded florist Eloise.

The film was released on September 18, 2009, by Universal Pictures. Love Happens garnered negative reviews from critics.

Burke Ryan is a successful therapist, holder of a Ph.D. and author of a self-help book that gives advice about dealing with the loss of a loved one. He writes the book to deal with his grief after his wife dies in a car accident.

While giving a workshop in Seattle, where his wife was from, Burke meets Eloise, who owns a flower shop. She spurns his initial advances because her past relationships had not gone well. However, after a heated exchange in the men's restroom, Eloise agrees to meet him for what is an awkward dinner.

Burke explains it is his first date in three years. Eloise assumes he is divorced, and they begin spending time together. She insists to her mother and her employee Marty that they are not "dating."

During the workshop, Burke pays special attention to a man named Walter, a former contractor working as a night janitor after his son died after falling off a scaffold, resulting in the loss of his marriage and construction business. He is attending the seminar at the insistence of his sister, but is unwilling to participate as he is not convinced Burke's methods will help him. Burke gets through to him by helping him remember his passion for construction and buys him new tools to restart his business.

Eloise suspects Burke is hiding secrets regarding the loss of his wife. She eventually learns the truth from Burke's manager Lane and tells him to stop punishing himself. Burke confesses to an audience that, in reality, he was the one driving the car when his wife died, and not her, as he previously maintained, and he blames himself for her death and has yet to confront his pain.

Burke's father-in-law, who snuck into the seminar to publicly call him out, comes forward to assure him that his wife's death was not his fault and that his in-laws were only upset that he would not mourn her death with them. Their reconciliation onstage receives applause from the audience. Afterward, Burke's father-in-law suggests it is time to move on with his life.

Burke decides to stay in Seattle. Going to Eloise's flower shop, he says they had spent the last few days getting to know the part of him that was not available, so he wonders if she would like to get to know the part of him that is. Eloise answers with a kiss.

Additional music by:

During development, the film was known as Brand New Day and Traveling.^[6] It takes place in Seattle, Washington, and was filmed in Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia.

On September 15, 2009, a lawsuit was filed by two writers claiming the film's premise was stolen from them, seeking an injunction against its release or to be awarded the film's future profits, estimated at $100,000,000.^[7]

On its opening weekend, the film opened at #4 behind I Can Do Bad All By Myself, The Informant!, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs respectively with $8,057,010.^[2][8]

Rotten Tomatoes reported that 16% of critics gave positive reviews based on 110 reviews with a score of 3.8/10. The site's consensus states: "Love Happens is a dull, chemistry-free affair that under-utilizes its appealing leads".^[9] Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating from reviews of mainstream critics, gave the film a "generally unfavorable" score of 33% based on 25 reviews.^[10]

Love Happens was released on DVD and Blu-ray on February 2, 2010. It grossed $7,721,633 in US DVD sales.^[11]

• Official website
• Love Happens at IMDb
• Love Happens at Box Office Mojo
• Love Happens at Rotten Tomatoes
• Love Happens at Metacritic
• Love Happens at the TCM Movie Database (archived version)