P.S. I Love You

WARNING: IF YOU LOVED THIS MOVIE AND CRIED THROUGH IT, OR IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET AND DON'T WANT TO BE TAINTED, STOP READING NOW. MAJOR SPOILERS AND STRONG OPINIONS TO FOLLOW.

As I walked out of the theater last night with two of my very favorite people in the world (thanks gals, had a blast!!), I felt a little ill. Not because I ate an entire box of Buncha Crunch with my Cherry Coke, but because I had no idea how I could come home and do a review for this movie today, feeling the way I did about it. Everyone I have talked to has LOVED this movie, and I, well....not so much. But my girls convinced me to go ahead with my review. After all, movie critics don't just review the movies they love, and honestly, I've been wanting to do a review of a movie that I didn't really like, you know, to test out my "critic" abilities and even things out after all the four star reviews. So out come the claws.


For those of you who haven't seen it yet, the storyline is this: A young widow (Hilary Swank, who is an amazing actress in everything but this movie...and The Next Karate Kid), devastated by the loss of her recently deceased husband (Gerard Butler), begins receiving letters from him that he wrote before he died, knowing the end was near (he died of a brain tumor.) Cue sappy music, grab the Kleenex. The idea is sweet and had possibility, but the filmmakers had no shame in doing whatever they could think of to tug on those heartstrings. I felt like they wanted me to cry so badly, that the rebel in me refused. Not a tear shed from this gal. Okay, maybe one.

I didn't completely hate the movie for one reason: Gerard Butler. I fell in love with him as the Phantom and was a little too excited to watch him in something where his face wasn't either half-covered by a mask or horribly disfigured. He was the movie's only redeeming quality. He could have stood there in head-to-toe plaid polyester and not said a word the entire time and still been the best part of the movie (hello, the face) but then you add his fun, goofy, chronically happy personality and that divine Irish accent and....well, you got me sitting impatiently through the scenes he's not in.

Hilary Swank, however, seemed horribly miscast. She just didn't seem right for this part and I kept putting other actresses in her place that I thought would have been much better. It didn't help that I really didn't like her character very much. Once again there was a stupid girl who had no earthly business being with the perfect, amazing guy that she had and totally didn't appreciate. At all. What is Hollywood's obsession with this? It makes me crazy. The whole movie I sat there trying to figure out what would have made Gerry (Gerard) love Holly (Hilary) so much. I never did figure it out.

Here are just some of the other things that rubbed me the wrong way:

~Were they in Ireland? Were they in New York? It only took me halfway through the movie (after mass confusion) to figure this out, thanks to some help from my viewing buddies.

~Um, what the heck kind of funeral was that? Besides a few tears from the widow, it seemed more like a birthday party. I sat there waiting for a twist, that it actually wasn't his funeral. No. It was.

~Harry Connick Jr. I don't even know what to say here. Just...weird.

~The supporting characters were very much "characters". Not believable, not relate-able. Besides a couple of laughs from Lisa Kudrow, there wasn't much else there. Especially Holly's very weird, badly-dyed-blonde sister. What was she on?

~Holly's family showed up to her apartment a week after the funeral to find her rotting in her misery, then proceed to chastise her for not being over it yet. She continues to get flack from different people throughout the movie for not having moved on yet. Um, seriously? You gotta be kidding me.

Okay, because I want to end on a positive note, here is what I liked about the movie:

~ Mr. Butler (duh)

~ the fact that it was a movie about a married couple...how rare is that? It really did make me appreciate my husband more.

~ Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who didn't do all that much for me on Grey's Anatomy, was gorgeous and actually believable as an Irishman. (I am wary of fake accents and he actually had us all wondering if he is really from Ireland. Nope. Seattle!)

~ the hospital scene after Holly's karaoke mishap. Each time the camera got closer and revealed another wound, we laughed harder and louder. We were still laughing five minutes later.

So was this long enough? I seriously could have made it ten times longer (what does that say about me, that my negative reviews come so much easier to me? hmmm...) but I'm sure you were all ready for me to shut up about three minutes ago.

To sum up: Great company, great night, great friends, not-so-great movie.

(Is anyone else having serious problems drafting and publishing posts?)