Hilary Swank, who won two Oscars for stamping down her femininity, now wants everyone to know she's a girl. Thanks, Hilary. Glad we cleared that up.
How else to explain her presence in P.S.: I Love You -- a low point in the tear-stained history of sappy, shallow chick drivel -- or the inordinate number of times she appears in only a bra? Yes, Hilary, you have boobies, can you stop raiding Sandra Bullock's trash for scripts now? This makes The Notebook look like Conan The Barbarian.
Swank plays Holly, an emotionally scattered New Yorker married to Gerry (Gerard Butler), a happy-go-lucky Irish-born limo driver. Butler, of course, was last seen in 300 leading scores of Spartans into certain, intractable anguish.
Guys arm-twisted by their girlfriends into this will relate.
We meet the two of them mid-conversation -- or, should I say, mid-squabble -- during a protracted pre-credit sequence that conveniently encapsulates their issues, relationship and ambitions.
Ten minutes -- about a few years -- later, Butler's dead of a brain tumour. At least his suffering is over.
This abrupt shift -- from Gerry the doting husband to Gerry the cadaver -- is purposefully jarring but dramatically misguided. Having never seen the couple convincingly happy, we can only take everyone's word for it that he was the love of her life -- or that they were even compatible. But then, maybe that's why God invented flashbacks.
With Gerry gone, we're introduced to Holly's friends and family -- Kathy Bates as her intrusive mother, Gina Gershon and Lisa Kudrow as her best friends, and Harry Connick Jr. as a semi-autistic bartender (don't ask) -- as well as the story's chief gimmick.
Sick as Gerry might have been, it turns out he was well enough to spend his final days scribbling letters to his soon-to-be widow.
On her 30th birthday, mere weeks following his demise, she begins to receive his messages mysteriously, one by one -- a sort of anti-bucket list, designed to help her cope without him. He tells her to throw out his clothes; she does. He tells her to go out and karaoke; she does. He tells her to go to Ireland; she -- well, you know. Some husbands will be shocked to learn that all they have to do get their wives to listen to them is die and leave directions.
Once in Ireland, Holly meets and has a fling with Gerry's old friend, William, another rugged Irishman (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) who couldn't be more of a cliche if she found him showering under a waterfall with a bar of Irish Spring.
Further contrivances pile up like leprechauns on boxes of Lucky Charms.
Chicks -- and their flicks -- deserve better.
(This film is rated PG)
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