P.S. I Love You
Synopsis
PS, I Love You, an adaptation of the book by the Irish writer Cecelia Ahern's first novel, is about a grieving widow who finds her husband's warmth radiating from the afterlife when she discovers that he left her a series of tasks to be revealed in ten monthly messages and designed to help her overcome her sorrow while gradually making the transition into a new life. Holly Kennedy (Hillary Swank) is a beautiful and successful woman whose good-humored husband Gerry (Gerard Butler) always stood by her side. Suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, Gerry succumbs to a devastating illness and Holly is left to face an uncertain future. No one in the world knows Holly better than Gerry, not even her mother (Kathy Bates) or her best friends Sharon (Gina Gershon) and Denise (Lisa Kudrow). But while Holly remains unsure if she can go on without the love of her life to help guide her, Gerry has planned ahead. On Holly's thirtieth birthday, she receives a cake and a special tape recording from Gerry that implores her to get out and celebrate instead of staying in and mourning. Later, as the months wear on, a series of additional messages arrive from Gerry - always delivered in the most remarkable and surprising of ways. With each new message comes a new adventure, and each letter signs off in the same familiar way: P.S. I Love You. Despite the fact that Holly's mother and friends thing these humorous, posthumous messages are keeping Holly bound to the past, the truth is that they are lovingly guiding her into the future while proving that sometime death isn't just the end, but a new beginning as well.
Spoilers and Bitchery
The question of love after death has been asked frequently enough in the movies, but seldom with the high ick factor found in "P.S. I Love You." "Ghost" with a brogue, "The Notebook" without the burden of old people, this post-life comedy will have the sentimentally challenged weeping openly, while clutching desperately to the pants legs of boyfriends and husbands who are trying to flee up the aisle. Richard LaGravenese's trip into Lifetime territory may define the guilty pleasure of the genre.
In the film's long, long pre-credits opening, Gerry (Gerard Butler) performs a striptease as the plot sets up the near-perfect marriage to Holly (Hilary Swank) that is about to be sabotaged by Gerry's yet-to-be-diagnosed brain tumor.
As for Swank, she spends just enough time in her underwear to suggest an effort to eroticize the star of "Boys Don't Cry" and "Freedom Writers," while trying to recover from her husband's premature death and attending to all the things Gerry's arranged for her to do. You wonder how she's going to do it -- she's like an overscheduled child on the Upper East Side.
We don't see Gerry during his illness -- what fun would that be? -- but, apparently, the man was lucid enough to plot out Holly's entire year post-Gerry, instructions for which are enclosed in letters delivered through mysterious means and which always include the title of the film (sob ...) as well as directives for party-going, karaoke singing and throwing out his stuff.
The plot leaves no sentimental stone unturned in what turns out to be a painful exercise in Irish-accented emoting and manufactured charm by the charismatic Butler.
Swank, cheerful yet grief-stricken as Holly, gives a decent enough performance, as do Gina Gershon and Lisa Kudrow (who despite the ill-produced writing brings a true air of sarcastic and cynic comedy that only Kudrow knows how to deliver) as the sidekicks who usher Holly through her mourning, and whose lives move on even as Holly's doesn't.
The idea of an ostensibly liberated woman living in Manhattan (despite having no visible means of financial support) and being dictated to by her late spouse may seem incongruous to some, and offensive to others. But to still others, it will spell a romantic ideal, embodied in a dead guy who cared enough to plan an entire year of his widow's life, replete with a trip to Ireland and a push toward new romantic horizons. Will she end up with Daniel (Harry Connick Jr.), who is charming but seems to suffer from a form of autism? Speaking of Daniel, he could have easily been paired up with Holly's sister who appeared to suffer from a moderate case of Down Syndrome! Or will Holly end up with Gerry's childhood friend William (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), whom she just happens to meet/sleep with while traveling through the Emerald Isle?
As an exercise in chick-flickery, "P.S. I Love You" wants to possess the soulfulness of harsh reality and the lilt of romantic fantasy at the same time. In this case, at least, it simply can't be done.