P.S. It's Rubbish!

Rating: 2/10 (10 January 2008)

Let me get this straight first, I had absolutely no desire whatsoever to see this movie, in fact had a friend not literally forced me to go with her I would no doubt have lived my days quite happily and never have had to endure this movie! The trailer looked pretty stupid, and the whole plot idea just sounded more creepy than anything else. But still this is all irrelevant, I went into the cinema today with my box of popcorn and prepared myself for a poor movie. Now you know every so often you sit and watch a movie you expect to be horrendous and come out pleasantly surprised, movie such as Alvin and the Chipmunks, well P.S. I love You is one of those movies that you go in expecting to dislike and come out absolutely hating. Now some of you will point out this got a 4/10 rating, well this has got that rating based partially on someone elses view, most namely a girls. You see in my eyes I would give this a 2/10 rating, but my friend liked this a hell of a lot more than I did, and because I am a fair person I decided this is a movie aimed at women, not me. Anyway P.S. I Love You is an overlong, over-schmaltzy, pretty unfunny, pretty well acted, predictable piece of trash that is just so eye gougingly annoying after a while you cannot help but get tired of it come the final hour. Hilary Swank does her very best, and she has a few scenes that are absolutely perfect, but Gerard Butler dons one of the worst accents in a long time and the movie takes a long time to get to an ending that was way too predictable in the first place. The other huge problem is that sometimes the comedy side falls very flat, in fact its not only unbelievable a widow would let some man crack jokes at her dead husband as he seems to do, but also seemingly the movie verges on insulting to a lot of widows out there.
So let me go into the performances with a little more depth. Hilary Swank as I've said is very good, sure the script lets her down, but she is such a good actress anyway that she seems to make the material work. Whenever it gets to the emotional stuff, or the more powerful stuff where she is dealing with being a widow, Swank delivers a killer of a performance. Just watch the karaoke scene, sure its cheesy as a result of the script, but if you watch Swank's face you can see she is acting her socks off and she's delivering a very good performance. A shame her performance in some of the flashbacks, especially the meeting sequence with Gerry, just seems poorly executed and leave Swank looking a bit silly more than anything else. Gerard Butler unfortunately just comes out of this movie looking a bit foolish. Sure he's a decent actor, and he seems a nice guy, but he cannot pull off an Irish accent for the life of him! He does decently in some scenes, in fact the smaller scenes work very well, but when he shouts and at the beginning, his accent just seems absurd and too silly for you to take the character seriously. Also sometimes you question why his character was ever with Swank's in the first place, she seems so unlikable at times and almost a bully towards him, so the relationship never seems to work. Luckily Lisa Kudrow is on hand to steal the movie and give the movie the comedic oomph that it needs. Unfortunately she's on screen all too briefly leaving the movie trying to find something funny way too often. Kathy Bates unfortunately is given nothing to do until five minutes towards the end where she delivers an extremely powerful sequence, but up until then she seems wasted. By far the worst though is Harry Connick Jr, a character that is supposed to be likable but just seems downright rude, in fact if I was Hilary Swank I'd have punched him within seconds of meeting him!
The movies major problem has to be the pacing and the length. This movie is simply way too long! There are so many irrelevant scenes, what the hell the point was in seeing how they met is beyond me, but it took up twenty more minutes! So much could be cut and by cutting it the movie might have at least passed average. Instead the movie droned endlessly on leaving you sick and tired with the characters and praying something exciting happens soon, it doesn't so before you see this movie don't expect anything even remotely like a thrill. The movie also aims to be sweet and tries to make you cry, it just makes you roll your eyes and makes you feel closer to depressed than anything else. The final huge flaw of the film just has to be the premise of thing. I have never read, nor ever intend to read the book this is based on. I just don't get how this is supposed to be a pleasant movie. This is about a grieving widow who receives messages from her dead husband, some people think its a sweet idea I just found it a poor way for the woman to get over her loss.
P.S. I Love You is a chick flick firmly aimed at people who love that genre, but for me this was too full of clichés and just too poorly made. This movie does have a bit of potential and at Swank seems to be trying to make this a good movie, but the movie is way too long and the storyline just too boring and unoriginal for the audience to care.