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Kim Hollis: I think Warner Bros. should actually be pretty thrilled with this debut. The commercials for the movie looked weird at best and awful at worst. Most audiences had no idea what the film was about and I can't imagine they really wanted to find out. I'm sure Soderbergh had his reasons, but selling a story like this one as a comedy just isn't going to work for typical movie-goers.

We were not there for her.

Love Happens, a Universal Pictures release with a title in the running for most generic ever, opened to $8.1 million. Why wasn't this film more happening?

Josh Spiegel: The marketing was all over the place, first of all. If, for example, you caught a preview during an NFL game, you wouldn't really see a movie about an outwardly extroverted public speaker with a dark past who meets a new love, you'd see a movie about Aaron Eckhart firewalking to get Jennifer Aniston. Also, the reviews were tepid, it seemed like Aniston wasn't actually a co-lead, no more so than John Carroll Lynch, who's given a pretty hefty non-romantic subplot; in essence, the movie just seemed destined for mediocrity.

Kim Hollis: And with regards to the marketing during football games, how much of a waste of cash was that? Universal couldn't have believed they were speaking to their target demographic there. This was a disaster from the moment they released the trailer.





Pete Kilmer: People are tired of seeing Aniston in these kind of romance films. In fact I might say people are getting tired of seeing Aniston period. She's boxed herself in, movie wise, in hapless romantic pictures. Which is too bad because, like Sandra Bullock, Aniston is a first rate comedic actress. She's more than held her own against Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller. It's beyond time for her to really get with someone who can push her in a comedy. She needs that, because that's when she shines. Right now, she's starring in Jennifer Lopez-like romantic cookie cutter dreck.

Reagen Sulewski: I think it's less that they're tired of these films than that they just plain can't tell them apart, or even know when they're coming out.

Tony Kollath: Not to mention, the title was stupendous in its uninspiredness.

Sean Collier: Tony, I am going to steal the phrase "stupendous in its uninspiredness" as soon as possible. Yet another problem - as much as I love Aaron Eckhart, he's not a romantic lead. He's many things - but romantic lead is not one of them. We've pretty much had a generic romantic comedy every weekend for several months now, with only a few breaks, and exactly none of these films have felt an obligation to distinguish themselves from the pack. That's just plain lazy, and the box office has, for the most part, reflected that.

Max Braden: The rejection of lookalike projects mystifies me a little. It looked like a carbon copy of Sleepless in Seattle, which opened at more than twice this did over 15 years ago. If people loved Sleepless so much, wouldn't they want to see a pleasant, non-Sandra-Bullock-stalker romance like this? I think Pete's right and it comes down to star power.

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