P.S. I Didn't Cry

Yeah, I watched P.S. I Love You. So what? It was late at night and I wanted to watch a movie. At my house, the only movies that I can watch comfortably (with the Wife) at an advance hour (i.e. after 9:00 pm) are new release chick-flicks. I have tried to watch Predator, The Jerk, Commando, Waterworld or Ed (oops, how did that one get in there) at this late hour, but my beautiful bride is never interested and expects my viewing to be in another room. That being said, I was flipping around the channels recently and not only did I stop on P.S. I Love You (heretofore known as PS) but I read the information screen, stopped flipping and told my Wife it was on. I realize that this may seem questionable but I am a professional blogger now and it’s not like I was wearing sequined pants and a plaid shirt!

When I initially flipped past the movie I just assumed that it was an old Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan film. Turns out, this movie actually stars Gerard Butler (of 300) and Hilary Swank (of The Next Karate Kid) as a mis-matched Irish-American couple. At the beginning of the movie they are shown fighting quite a bit with neither of them seeming thrilled with their position in the NYC rat race. The movie takes a very quick left turn though as Butler’s character of Gerry (I guess another mother in the Village had already named her kids Thom and Fill) either suddenly died of a brain tumor or slowly died of a brain tumor in an unexplained time lapse. Either way, when I found out the character died of a brain tumor I kept thinking, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famous line “It’s not a tumor” from Kindergarten Cop is in my opinion the most memorable line in a career filled with transcendental quotes.

Note: I suspect you are trying to sound out the word transcendental right now with the plan to look it up once you can successfully say it out loud. I realize that transcendental refers to a non algebraic complex number, however I also think it should refer to a series of great movie quotes. I would formulate it something like: e = Cool/Austrian

If you have read this blog before I have previously harped on the type casting of actors. In this case, I have personally type cast Gerard Butler and it is not as a romantic lead. I don’t know if this makes me a hypocrite or not (I have already taken a lot of grief for watching PS, so being considered a hypocrite doesn’t really hurt) but I just can’t see him being anything other than the Phantom of Leonidas (a handy combination of the Phantom of the Opera and King Leonidas). When Gerry and Holly (Swank) are fighting at the beginning of the movie I was really cheering for Gerry to just yell “This is Sparta” and then kick Holly into a bottomless pit of doom while simultaneously dropping the kitchen chandelier onto some innocent passer-bys. Of course, much to my dismay I mostly just got this long, drawn out scavenger hunt for love with a sprinkle of Jo Jo Dancer.

I am not always the best judge on these things, but I think that this movie was written by a gal who loved Gerard Butler in 300 and Chad Lowe in Life Goes On (Emmy Award winning Chad Lowe). If my premonition is correct, she sat at her typewriter in much the same way that I do and just thought of the coolest way to combine her love for those two actors. Or course, who knows what the heck has happened to Chad Lowe, so the next best thing would be to punish Hilary Swank (Collateral Damage – punish all of us too). So, she slowly typed out her story goals: “Gerard Butler stands around without his shirt” and then “Hilary Swank cries for two hours and fifteen minutes.”

When PS was over it was obvious that the aforementioned writer had delivered (and Hilary Swank had pulled it off) a character with the Ruth-ian task of constant crying for an entire film. I kid you not, Hilary Swank cried from 9:00 pm until 11:15 pm. I really wonder how she motivated herself to cry that much. I mean, when you think about the number of scenes in this movie, added to the number of takes a typical scene has, she must have thought of every single sad and tragic event in the history of earth. I should have looked at the credits closely to see if there was a historian on the payroll.

Meanwhile, Gerard Butler was topless in almost all of his scenes. Interestingly enough he was topless both as a live character and as a ghost. Of course, you may be asking “Warren, does this film hypothesize that humans haunt their former lovers in a form representative of their peak of physical beauty?” The answer to that question is yes, but apparently it can only last for one calendar year. So, we all have that to look forward to!

P.S. I did squeeze out a tear when James Bond was being whipped in the grapes in Casino Royale.

Warren