P.S. I Love You

Rating: 4/10 (3 October 2010)

Hilary Swank is probably best known for her somewhat masculine Oscar-winning performances in the 1999 transsexual tale Boys Don't Cry and Clint Eastwood's boxing movie Million Dollar Baby (2004), so it's good to see her in distinctively feminine roles for a change. In the film adaptation of Cecelia Ahern's novel PS, I Love You, Swank plays a married 30-year old woman Holly Kennedy whose dear husband Gerry (Gerard Butler) suddenly dies of a brain tumor at the age of 35. Numb and alienated at first, Holly starts getting a grip on her life again when she begins receiving letters that Gerry had written before his demise, guiding her to open up to joy again. With her friends Denise and Sharon (Lisa Kudrow and Gina Gershon) and sister Ciara (cute Nellie McKay), Holly follows the letters' instructions leading her to Gerry's home in Ireland among other places, eventually overcoming her sorrow.
Romantic drama-comedies have frequently been aimed at the most undemanding of female audiences, but not often this obviously. The Gerry character has been written so ridiculously dreamy that it is impossible to think of him as a real person: he's self-confident, humorous, musical and even speaks with a sexy Irish accent. Since none of the other men, like Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a handsome Irish musician-lifesaver (!) or Harry Connick Jr. as the "adorably insecure" potential love interest Daniel, are any better characterized, all of the responsibility is shoved on the shoulders of the women. Unfortunately, the clichéd best friends, their man-hunting tips and the subplots about their relationships provide nothing even remotely fresh or interesting. The always charismatic Kathy Bates helps a little with her performance as Holly's skeptical mother Patricia, but of course her storyline is also concluded according to the conventions of the genre. Hilary Swank herself delivers a decent performance too, but like the other actors, she isn't given much of a character to work with.
If the plot is just as cheesy as the plot description above implies, so is the execution of it. Neither the score nor the song choices on the soundtrack ever even attempt a new approach to the age-old feelings they are supposed to illustrate; I mean, I like The Pogues but the filmmakers could really have picked something more surprising than "Love You 'til the End" and "Fairytale of New York" from the band's catalogue. The scenery is pretty to look at though, especially during the Ireland scenes, even if constantly gorging on the beauty of the green pastures often comes across as heavy-handedly emphasizing the irritating perfectness of Gerry's loving plan for Holly.
I admit that I am not part of the target demographic of this type of movies and that they're only meant to be taken as light escapism, but I really think either a more credible, less predictable story or less hackneyed comedy would have been needed to make P.S. I Love You an entertaining romance romp. If stereotypical guys' movies objectify women as sex symbols, romance weepies like this one can be said to objectify men as unrealistic daydream teddy bears. Sure, both kinds of films are good to have at hand when you want to just unplug your brain and pass some relaxing time, but personally I was just writhing in my chair hoping for the two-hour movie to finally end. Only for the most sentimental romance fans.