Love Happens

Love Happens
Spoiler Alert: I will give away some of the best scenes.

While watching movies, I often look for the lessons that can be applied to writing novels. This week, I watched Love Happens with Jennifer Aniston. I was hesitant to see it because of the bad review I heard on the radio, but it turned out to be quite entertaining.

All romances need a strong conflict keeping the hero and heroine apart. The conflict between the hero and heroine was strong. He is still emotionally distraught over the loss of his wife and the role he played in her death. It is impossible for the hero to love again unless he puts her death behind him.

Transitions need to be done well in both movies and novels. In this case, most were seemless, but there was one exception. Near the beginning of the movie, the heroine is in the men’s room confronting the hero. She tells him she would not go out with him and why. In the next scene, she receives flowers and in the following scene, she walks into the restaurant to meet him as if they never had the argument. That transition was jolting. It wasn’t true to her character, in my opinion. She could have given him all the reasons she wasn’t going to meet him, followed by the one pivotal reason she decided to show up. Would have been more true to the character.

On the other hand, the humor was well written and executed. Often times you can come up with funny scenes if you write down what would be the worst, most inappropriate act someone could do at that moment. In this movie, one mourner made cookies with her husband’s ashes because he enjoyed them so much in life. Another woman admitted she had made a mold of her husband’s…private parts before he died so they could still have fun after his death. Later, our motivational speaker/hero hides under his in-laws table. Appears against character, but in this case is meant to be humorous and does in fact come off as funny.

Overall, I found the humor a needed break from the heavy emotional scenes brought on by most of the characters dealing with the loss of a loved one. Also, the hero and heroine were well suited for each other, the conflict was believable, and the scenes held my interest.

I hope you will find a movie to analyze and share your findings. We enjoy hearing from you.

Until next time,
Happy Writing,
Tina LaVon