Unusually Formulated Chick-Flick

Rating: 7/10 (23 December 2008)

P.S. I LOVE YOU is one of those films that falls firmly into the "chick-flick" category. The story surrounds the grieving widow, her mother, and her friends, and how they all come together to help heal after the death of the studly husband. Sound schmaltzy for you guys out there? It might be.
But it is unique for a couple of reasons...
First is that one of the main characters, Gerry (Gerard Butler, 300) is dead. Although we meet him for a brief moment early on and during a series of flashbacks, he is, in essence, not there. We also don't get to watch him die. The death is startlingly quick, and it jerks the viewer to full attention because it is this sudden loss we see and feel via Gerry's wife, Holly (Hillary Swank, FREEDOM WRITERS), who also senses the loss of Gerry as extremely sudden  due to a brain tumor, or so we're told.
The other interesting thing is that Holly learns more about her husband after his death than during their short marriage. She travels to Ireland (where they initially met) at the behest of Gerry who, during his illness, arranged for Holly to have a life after his demise. He does this post-mortem trickery by arranging for messages to be dropped off to her at various times and from various people around New York. Initially seeming to be macabre, the story rapidly evolves into ...something more. Holly's trip to Ireland with her two best friends Denise (Lisa Kudrow) and Sharon (Gina Gershon) reveal to Holly that there's a lot more life out there after losing your soul-mate. And she finds it in unique and disturbing places.
Another unique quality was that Holly's mother, Patricia (Kathy Bates, THE GOLDEN COMPASS) turned out to be an accomplice within the entire story's machinations, something that took even me by surprise. Pleasantly. I also enjoyed the eventual dead-end relationship Holly ended up having with Daniel (Harry Connick Jr., THE IRON GIANT) that I thought would turn out very differently. And Holly's Ireland love interest, William (the hunky Jeffrey Dean Morgan, WEEDS) figures heavily in Holly's past and, possibly, her future.
But even with all of this uniqueness, the story as a whole turns out fairly predictable. The grieving widow heals (albeit unusually), friends help her, mother helps her, and new friends and lovers make her grope for reason and what her life now means. It is schmaltzy, so just be prepared for that. Your wives and girlfriends will probably love it if you rent it for them, though.