By Linda Winsh-Bolard
This is surprisingly grown up movie for today’s Hollywood. Not quite credible, but closer to reality than many.
Burke Ryan (Aaron Eckhart) has lost his wife in a car accident and is building financial empire preaching recovery from grief. On his promotional tour through Seattle, with a mega deal in the worst possible taste is in the offings, (his bestseller is named “A-OK! A Path Through Grief,” if you need a hint), he meets, by quirky accident, a florist named Eloise (Jennifer Aniston). He notices her not only because she is pretty but because she writes odd words on walls behind pictures.
At first Eloise spurs any attempts to even talk, later she relents. Step by step, they attempt to meet each other. During that process Eloise discovers that the man who preaches acceptance sells snake oil: he is still devastated by his wife’s death and still feels guilty about it.
It is slow film, full of odd small episodes, sometimes quirky and occasionally romantic. One involves Burke’s former father in law (Martin Sheen) and the parrot his wife had; it finds resolution at the very end, a nice resolution questioning many assumptions.
The sub stories involve grieving father Walter played convincingly by John Carroll Lynch, Burke’s manager (Dan Fogler), Eloise’s assistant (Judy Greer) who has strange literary ambitions and the sadly undeveloped link with Eloise's mother. Somehow you want to know more about all these people, just like you would in real life. Burke’s therapy is naïve if perhaps well intentioned, but it seems to say more about today’s need to believe than about him.
Both, Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart, are attractive and do well in their parts; she is overburdened by cutesy, he by long rambling monologs, but they convey the human uncertainty and loneliness that brought many of us to less than perfect dates and sometimes, were we so lucky, to discovery that somebody might be more interesting than we originally thought, quite nicely. I like the idea that people do not burn with desire on sight, on contrary, they are riddled with doubts, they might not even like each other that much, they just want to spend some time less alone- it’s so real.
The chances of TV personality getting interested in a simple florist are small. Florists are like bell boys, nobody ever really sees them. But this florist is not bowled over or simple and certainly does not fit the "poor to riches girl" mode. The guy who sells salvation is neither saint nor evil. He is man with a niche and hidden regrets.
The slowly developing relationship, where no one jumps beds, separates the film from current trend. It does not reach the heights of classical romantic comedy but it avoids the slippery slope of both, the chick film and the sentimental grovel.
Perhaps the name does not fit the film (it started out as Brand New Day). It suggests that love happens when you don’t look for it or expect it, but the story itself is more about finding a beginning to human connection. There is suggestion of love but instead of ramming it in, it leaves the end pleasantly open.
The films suffers from large number of dropped sub plots, ideas that show up once and never come back, over long monologs and a slow beginning that again makes suggestions about Burke that are never mentioned again.
Still, it is oddly soothing story after an avalanche of rather silly so called comedies that are full of coarse language, coarser body functions and oddly shot sex. The director, Brandon Camp, and writer, Mike Thompson, make you remember there is more to movies than juvenile joy at other people base bodily malfunctions. These days that it such a relief.
