Entertainment | Jennifer Aniston Love Happens Is Manipulative Tripe Jennifer Aniston rom-com strikes out with critics By Nick McMaster Posted Sep 18, 2009 2:18 PM CDT Copied In this film publicity image released by Universal Pictures, Aaron Eckhart, left, and Jennifer Aniston are shown in a scene from, "Love Happens." (AP Photo/Universal Pictures, Kimberley French) If only love didn't happen. Critics are lambasting Jennifer Aniston's new rom-com, Love Happens—the story of a courtship between a florist and a grieving grief counselor—as predictable and manipulative: It's "an inorganic soap opera," writes Michael Sragow in the Baltimore Sun. "Love happens here with a banality suitable for a film choked with homilies about mourners needing to shift their gaze from the rear-view mirror." "The movie strokes that grief chord over and over again, playing on the emotions of anybody who's ever lost a loved one, in a way that feels claustrophobic and dishonest," writes Stephanie Zacharek in Salon. "I kept counting the minutes until I could escape its cloying, self-helpy vapors." "Two hours of plodding, painfully predictable pseudo-drama interspersed with occasional dollops of comedy lite," sums up Bruce Demara in the Toronto Star. Read These Next Musk says his new party is in business. A Texas man's disappearance is fodder for true-crime mania. Kerr County considered a flood warning system years ago. Cancer claims the life of an MLB champ at 44. Report an error