PS I Love You

‘PS I Love You’ opens with a row between husband and wife Holly (Hilary Swank) and Gerry (Gerald Butler) that is so phoney it’s embarrassing to watch. What’s intended is a screwball clash, the happy-go-lucky Irishman and the uptight New Yorker. But there’s not so much as a spark between these two, and only the knowledge that he’s about to be killed off by a brain tumour is inducement to keep watching. And yet, even after death, we are not rid of the glint-eyed Gerry, as amid clumsy flashbacks of their relationship, Swank begins to receive letters from beyond the grave. Organised during his illness, they are a predictable hash of life-affirming folksy blarney. The first arrives on her thirtieth birthday and for a year she is ordered around by her dead husband: buy a dress, wait for a sign, it’ll all fit into place. Lifting this all just above quite woeful sentimentality is Lisa Kudrow and Gina Gershon as Swank’s terrifically caustic friends. But not even they can make good of this surprisingly heartless film.