'P.S. I love You' wallows in sentiment
No matter how much critics might trash this abysmally sentimental ode to romantic goo, it won't matter to the hordes of adoring, faithful female Gerard Butler fans who would flock to see the hunky "300" actor even if he was reading Chicago police autopsy reports.
Worse, those adoring fans will drag along their boyfriends, husbands and significant others who, with glazed eyes, will sit plastered in their seats while silently screaming through the treacle torture on the silver screen.
Like a badly written Neil Simon play, "P.S. I Love You" begins benignly enough as a fight between the very married Gerry and Holly Kennedy (Butler and Oscar winner Hilary Swank). This doesn't sound like a real domestic squabble, because it's mostly a clumsy attempt to cram in too much background information about the characters.
We find out Holly is the mature, sober and rational one and Gerry is the immature fun guy she met in Ireland. But wouldn't they already know their own history and character traits?
"I was 19 when I got married!" Holly tells Gerry. What? He didn't know that?
Wisely, Gerry dies early in this movie. But he still can't get out of it. He keeps popping in during a series of flashbacks that show how he met Holly and how they married despite objections by her tavern-owner mom, Patricia (Oscar-winner Kathy Bates).
The conceit of "P.S." is that wily Gerry, knowing that his widow will have a tough go of it without him, apparently spent his last months designing an elaborate series of challenges to perk up Holly's spirits after that inevitable moment when a brain tumor takes Gerry out of her life.
Sure enough, unbathed Holly lethargically lies around her cluttered apartment. That necessitates her mom and two best pals Denise and Sharon (Lisa Kudrow and Gina Gershon) to bust down her door for an intervention.
On Holly's 30th birthday, she gets a recording from dead Gerry, telling her to "celebrate" herself or, like those cruise ship commercials say, "Get out there!"
A chain of successive letters follows. Each one ends with "P.S. I Love You." Each one urges her to do wacky stuff, like go to Ireland, sing karaoke and meet new people such as William (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a sexy Irish singer.
Will she fall for the musical lug? Or will she hook up back home with Daniel (Harry Connick Jr.), Mom's inadvertently comical bartender who has a syndrome that prevents him from filtering his immediate thoughts?
Connick's perfectly blank expression and dead-pan delivery prove to be the saving grace of this exercise in beyond-the-grave schmaltz.
"P.S." comes from Oscar-nominated writer/director Richard LaGravenese, who wrote the script to "The Bridges of Madison County" and directed the cliched "Freedom Writers" (also starring Swank).
In "P.S.," he goes for broke in a boldly soggy romance that thinks women falling down is funny and trite cliches such as "I can't do this anymore!" is good writing.
None of this will matter to fans of the Scottish-born Butler, a heartthrob who performs two admirable acts of courage here: a comically forced strip-tease and an authentic Irish brogue.
"P.S. I Love You"
1 star out of four
Opens today
Starring As
Hilary Swank Holly Kennedy
Gerard Butler Gerry Kennedy
Lisa Kudrow Denise
Harry Connick Jr. Daniel
Written by Richard LaGravenese and Steven Rogers, based on the novel by Cecelia Ahern. Produced by Wendy Finerman, Broderick Johnson, Andrew A. Kosove and Molly Smith. Directed by Richard LaGravenese. A Warner Bros. release. Rated PG-13 (sexual reference, nudity) Running time: 126 minutes.