Reviewed by Neil Davey
Stars Hilry Swank, Gerard Butler, Lisa Kudrow, Harry Connick Jr,
Gina Gershon, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kathy Bates
Written by Richard LaGravanese & Steven Rogers,
based on the novel by Cecelia Ahern
Certification UK 12A | US PG-13
Runtime 123 minutes
Directed by Richard LaGravanese
Beggorah. If it isn't toime for some comedy Oirishness in the name of romantic whimsy. At all, at all. From the moment Scottish actor Gerard Butler opens his mouth and reveals his horrendous faked accent, any potential charm that this unusual love story has disappears. The bad news is that Butler speaks some 15 seconds in and, despite then dying within the first five minutes, the use of flashbacks means your ears will be mauled at regular intervals for the next buttock-troubling two hours.
The death of Gerry (the name of Butler's character; we're not just being terribly informal) is the basis for what could have been a moving and unusual take on the rom com. His death leaves his widow Holly (Swank) bereft and, despite the best efforts of family (Bates) and friends (Kudrow, Gershon), Holly's life has become a struggle. Until, that is, her birthday, when a cake and a tape recording arrive from the late Gerry. Gerry reveals that she's to go and "celebrate herself"' and that she can expect a series of letters over the next few months. Each letter is, inevitably, signed "PS I Love You" and sets Holly on a series of new steps in life.
So far, so twee but, with LaGravanese at the helm — the man who managed to make the potential nausea of Freedom Writers such a genuinely moving experience — a cast of this calibre and Ahern's smartly off-kilter world view and characters, things should have been at least bearable. They're not. With the best will in the world, PS I Love You is a vomit-inducing, utterly charmless experience that's unbearably smug and approximately one sixteenth as cute as it thinks it is. The makers clearly aren't alone in exploiting the Irish angle as an emotional short cut for whimsy but, by failing to back it up with anything remotely appealing of their own, it all falls embarrasingly flat.
It's a shame, because Swank deserves better; ditto Harry Connick, who gets most of the best lines. Butler too is a leading man of considerable potential, but why hamper him with a ridiculous brogue? Either relocate the story to the Highlands of Scotland or find an Irish actor! It can't be that tricky, surely? It's not romantic, it's not comic and, quite frankly, the truly magical Bridge To Terabithia handled premature death in a more sensitive manner. It's hard then to justify PS I Love You's existence in any way whatsoever. And it's even harder to find a reason why any of you should shell out to see it...