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 ”I’ve fallen in love with a leprechaun!” exclaims Hilary Swank, snogging Irish hubbie Gerard Butler in a small but chic Brooklyn apartment. Seconds later, over the cleanest, most wholesome counter imaginable, a priest and a mother-in-law announce that Gerry is dead – of a brain tumour.
His mourners are very obviously Irish-American, and the pub family-owned. But this is no ordinary wake. Gerry has arranged for his ashes to be collected in a studded leather box. Shots of whiskey gleam while Fairytale of New-York, his favourite song, plays on the bar-room stereo. “You’re an old slut on junk!” growls Shane McGowan, and the priest sings along. “I'd a dog who died once,” blurts the barman; “-didn’t have anything so creative...but it isn’t the same, of course.” P.S. I Love You applies Hollywood schlock, a frantic screenplay, and some bad Irish accents to a yarn about a widow who receives letters from her husband after his death. In the letters he tells her to see inlaws, sing karaoke, and go out with friends – anything to revisit their past and get ‘closure.’ Much of the film, particularly its view of US city living, mimics Sex In the City, Friends, and Annie Hall. The heroine bounces from location to location in immaculately pressed fashion items. She’s broke, but her flat has been decorated by designers. Gerry’s letters are scripted in fountain ink, each one post-scripted ‘I love you’.’ Hilary receives them in parks, birthday presents, and chance meetings with old friends. Frankly, Gerry would have needed a career in marketing and the cast of a reality TV show to pull it off when alive, let alone cremated. Fortunately, the set pieces – once we get to them – are very, very good; the acting is, in parts, stupendous, and the writing wry and touching. It’s almost worth the ticket price to see an A-list dramatress sing karaoke in a skimpy dress, or pretend to be an exchange student hiking through Galway, with convincing hesitation and embarrassment. In a press showing, four out of six journalists laughed at all the jokes; not just polite grunts; proper belly-shaking pig laughter. Pity so much of the film is obsessed with its own production values. Instantly forgettable yet oddly intelligent, moving, and funny, P.S. is onion soup with a big dripping scoop of ice-cream in it. Expect to cringe, laugh, sniffle, and cringe.
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