Time to move on

Rating: 6/10 (17 January 2009)

Gerard Butler does a great acting job in this movie. It's too bad that this movie is really more about Hillary Swank and her failure to come to grips with reality than it is about him.
In the first scene of the movie, Gerard and Hillary are having a squabble. They've been married for a few years, have what seems to be a nice life, but Hillary is upset because she doesn't think that life will get any better. She carries this pessimistic attitude throughout the movie. They wind up making up and everything seems great.
Next scene, life changes drastically when the scene is Gerard's Irish Pub style funeral. Boom, what a transition. How did we get from point A to point B? I was left pondering what was the purpose of that first scene. I've discussed this other friends and each one has a different theory.
Anyway, the rest of the movie is about Hillary Swank's reluctance to get over Gerard's unexpected departure. She has a great group of friends and a mom who is very supportive, but Hillary would rather be depressed than move on. She gets letters from her departed husband and in his letters he gives her great advice... move on with your life. Yet she seems stuck in a rut that she has no desire to get out of. When she finally meets a man she's attracted to (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), she finds out that he's an old mate of Gerard's and that kind of ends that.
Well, eventually, after 2 painful hours of watching her struggle, the movie finally wraps up. There's a guy who really likes her, but she's just not interested.
There's no real ending here. Life just goes on and we all can hope that she gets over her loss. There's hope at the end, but we're really not sure.
I give this movie 6 stars for the acting, which was superior. The story was fine and the characters were interesting. There just wasn't a happy ending here that I was hoping for.