Smooth talking author Burke Ryan is promoting his new self-help tome, A-Okay, and doing such a good job he's on the verge of a multimedia deal that could see him become a fully-fledged brand.

But despite his novel approaches to self-improvement and forgiveness, Burke is a man racked with guilt and pain having lost his wife in a car crash three years earlier.

Back in Seattle, the city where his wife died, Burke hasn't so much as looked at another woman since - until he bumps (literally) into Eloise (Jennifer Aniston), the florist whose arrangements adorn the hotel he's residing in.

The pair begin something of a romance, as she attempts to get beneath the surface of a man who apparently has it all, while he struggles to deal with the success that could only have happened off the back of his wife's death.

Dressed up as a rom-com, and with Aniston playing a role that even that genre would require to be rather more developed, Love Happens misses a rather simple trick by not delving further into Burke's issues.

Instead, Burke's pain is merely a back drop to a budding romance, rather than the other way around. Pursuing his alcoholism (sponsored by Grey Goose vodka, no less), guilt and hypocrisy would have made for a far more intriguing story than the inevitable will they/ won't they/ yes they will approach that applies to almost any Aniston rom-com.

Eckhart's presence is still strong, the man oozes charisma, while Aniston does her usual shtick with a ridiculously simple character - as if to show some eccentricity or emotional depth, writer/ director Camp has her scrawling obscure words on walls around town, highlighting exactly how little thought has gone into her side of the story.

The pair are abley supported by Martin Sheen, as the moody father-in-law and, in particular, John Carroll Lynch, who plays a father struggling to deal with the loss of his son, and calls time on Burke Ryan's walking-on-coals approach to grief.

It's a movie that suffers because it offers a glimpse at a far more interesting premise, but elects to stick to rom-com tradition. Ultimately, love does happen, and for Aniston fans that'll no doubt suffice. But the rest of us are left wondering, is that all?

Rich Phippen