Cynical Cinema

P.S. I Love You is out on DVD now.  My girlfriend watched it with her friends, then insisted that I absolutely had to watch it with her also.  And I get why.  I really do.  This movie is designed specifically with women in mind, and I think the people who made this decided to completely forego any audience they might receive with men and concentrate entirely on the female demographic.  So it’s the opposite of, say, Shoot ‘Em Up, a movie that didn’t care about a female audience at all.  And neither one is very good, for that reason.  When you decide to make a movie, and you decide to focus that movie entirely toward one group of people, the movie becomes very calculated.  You are designing a movie, moreso than creating one.  And P.S. I Love You is an incredibly calculated, contrived film.

It stars Gerard Butler and Hilary Swank as a married couple who are still hopelessly in love after twelve years of marriage.  Then he dies.  He has had this inoperable brain tumour, see, and he knew he was going to die.  But he knew that pretty young Hilary Swank was going to be devastated by his passing, and was going to lose her mind, so he decided to help her out.  And before he died, he created a series of notes and messages that would be delivered to her from beyond the grave.  Oooooh.  So, she gets these notes, and follows the instructions, and eventually gets over her crushing grief.  In the meantime, each note triggers a memory of Butler, so we get to see flashbacks of them in younger, happier times, being in love. 

And that’s all there is to this movie.  It’s basically two hours of people being in love.  And people loving each other for TWO hours is BORING.  And the love story is not the only thing that’s contrived here.  Hilary Swank goes to Ireland at one point.  While there, she meets a guy and tells him her whole story - my husband died, I’m here to see his country and family, blah blah blah…my name is Holly…then they sleep together.  Then, in the morning, she says her husband’s name.  And they both get a shock when they find out that they actually know each other!  He is her husband’s childhood best friend!  Well…wouldn’t he have put two and two together?  I have a best friend that recently died, he married a girl named Holly, there is an American woman in his home town named Holly, whose husband has recently died…and she looks exactly like the Holly I met when they got together…wait, that’s YOU?  It makes no sense, but lets us in on more tear-jerking moments and some “humour”.

But the most contrived thing about the movie is the constant preponderance of tear-jerking moments.  With a film like this - dead guy, grieving widow, there are many opportunites to throw maudlin, sappy, crying moments into it.  And this film does not miss a single opportunity to do so.  And so some women might enjoy this, because they want to cry throughout an entire movie.  But me, being a cynical guy, am screaming “come on, already!  That’s enough!”  But it isn’t enough.  They need to cram more of it in there.  And so we get two full hours of this, which is way too long.  This movie is a calculated, irritating string of moments designed to make people sad.  And there is really no story whatsoever.  It is two hours of two people being in love, and because one of those people is dead, we sob into our hankies and wipe our tears on the pillows on the couch and appreciate our loved ones around us.

 Or, we get uncomfortable, irritated, and we count the minutes until it is over.  Two hours of people being in love, even if those two people are as attractive and likeable and good as Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler, is not a movie.  Kathy Bates plays Swank’s mother, and she is given nothing at all to do.  Gina Gershon and Lisa Kudrow show up as her best friends, and they are fairly useless except to create contrived comedic scenes.  Like the one where their lifejackets all inflate.  Hilarious.  And Harry Connick Jr., while he is quite funny in the film, doesn’t seem to serve any purpose either, and Swank’s relationship with him is so briefly touched upon that when it comes to a head later in the film, we have absolutely no idea why.  If you are going to watch a movie designed by a focus group for women to make you cry, watch The Notebook.  At least that film had a story, and you just might enjoy it.  P.S. I Love You is just too calculated to be any good at all.