PS I Love You (2007)

"Ms. Swank's ardent sincerity and naked emotionalism dovetail nicely with Mr. LaGravenese's melodramatic excesses.  Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
"...LaGravenese brings some intelligence and maturity to a genre that sorely needs it...  Scott Tobias, The Onion A.V. Club
"...a teary, unabashedly sappy, romantic comedy...  William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Editor's Note Two-time Oscar winner Hillary Swank tries her hand at romantic comedy in this touching film based on the bestselling Irish novel. Holly Kennedy (Swank) and her charming Irish husband Gerry (Gerard Butler) are a young couple struggling to get by in New York City. Their marriage is 10 years strong, and they are madly in love, but the fates soon step in, when Gerry develops cancer and dies. Holly is completely devastated, and her friends Denise (Lisa Kudrow) and Sharon (Gina Gershon) do their best to console her. Her mother (Kathy Bates) and sister, Rose (Nellie Mckay), also offer their support, but it seems nothing can pull Holly out of her grief. Then one day, she begins to receive love letters Gerry penned before his death. The letters are filled with various stories and instructions, and one of them even contains a plan that sends her and her friends on a trip to Ireland. As Gerry's posthumous letters buoy her up, Holly slowly begins to piece her life back together. His letters help her to celebrate their special love story, and remind her that she must continue to live her life, and seek out happiness. The film's stellar cast delivers many tearjerker moments, and P.S. I LOVE YOU does a fine job of yanking on the heartstrings. However, the tone often shifts so abruptly, it at times feels as though they couldn't quite decide if Holly was a steel magnolia, a Bridget with a diary, or a devil in search of some Prada. But the strong performances manage to hold the tale together, and the story is ultimately moving, and yes, romantic.

	Gerard Butler
	Gina Gershon
	Harry Connick, Jr.
	Hilary Swank
	James Marsters
	Kathy Bates
	Lisa Kudrow
	Nellie McKay
	Cecelia Ahern - Based On Novel By
	David Moritz - Editor
	Doug Huszti - Art Director
	John Powell - Original Music By
	Lisa Zupan - Executive Producer
	Richard LaGravenese - Director
	Richard LaGravenese - Screenplay
	Shepherd Frankel - Production Designer
	Steven Rogers - Screenplay
	Terry Stacey - Cinematographer
	Wendy Finerman - Producer

Sight and Sound
"Lisa Kudrow puts in an entertaining performance...and Harry Connick Jr. brings dark humour to his role..." 02/01/2008 p.77

The Village Voice 5 of 10
This isn't the first time that Richard LaGravenese, the gifted writer of A Little Princess and The Fisher King and writer-director of the lovely Living Out Loud, has gone bestseller slumming. His screenplay for The Bridges of Madison County was good enough to persuade a dispiriting number of respected critics that a movie was worth making out of that dreadful piece of pulp. Nothing, however, could redeem the chipper folk wisdom of P.S. I Love You, the first novel (for want of a better word) of Cecelia Ahern, a twenty-something Irish "writer" whose chief literary asset is a sharp eye for the winning romantic formula. Hilary Swank, who was not put in this world to simper, does little else as a young wife whose twinkly leprechaun of an Irish husband (Gerard Butler, who's Scottish, but never mind) has died, leaving her to mope around in lacy black underwear, do her nails, and lean on Mom (Kathy Bates) and the usual wisecracking friends (Lisa Kudrow and Gina Gershon)...LaGravenese has sliced away the worst of Ahern's excruciating prose, but that proves a negative virtue. With "She longed for the couch to hold out its arms to her" out of the way, there's little left to dance to but the old stages-of-grief two-step, and some blessedly irreverent noodling with Harry Connick Jr. - Ella Taylor

Variety 5 of 10
The question of love after death has been asked frequently enough in the movies, but seldom with the high ick factor found in "P.S. I Love You." "Ghost" with a brogue, "The Notebook" without the burden of old people, this post-life comedy will have the sentimentally challenged weeping openly, while clutching desperately to the pants-legs of boyfriends and husbands who are trying to flee up the aisle. Richard LaGravenese's trip into Lifetime territory may define the guilty pleasure of the genre...In the film's long, long pre-credits opening, Gerry (Gerard Butler) performs a striptease as LaGravenese sets up his near-perfect marriage to Holly (Hilary Swank) that is about to be sabotaged by Gerry's yet-to-be-diagnosed brain tumor...The idea of an ostensibly liberated woman living in Manhattan (despite having no visible means of support) and being dictated to by her late spouse may seem incongruous to some, and offensive to others. But to still others, it will spell a romantic ideal, embodied in a dead guy who cared enough to plan an entire year of his widow's life, replete with a trip to Ireland and a push toward new romantic horizons...As an exercise in chick-flickery, "P.S. I Love You" wants to possess the soulfulness of harsh reality and the lilt of romantic fantasy at the same time. In this case, at least, it simply can't be done. - John Anderson