Not one to shun a good chick flick, or even a bad one, when P.S. I Love You -- now available on DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray from Warner Home Video -- showed up on my doorstep, I found it impossible to pass up the wily Irish charms of Gerard Butler, the sappiness of the story or, most importantly, the sweet, cinematic seduction of Ms. Hilary Swank. I mean, I hold myself to be one of her longest running fans, having fallen in love with her back during the heady days of her being The Next Karate Kid. And a love that lasts 14 years knows no bounds. It will even entice me to watch P.S. I Love You. Unfortunately for me and Ms. Swank, our love isn't strong enough to make me like P.S. I Love You.

Based on one of the most depressing concepts for a love story this side of The Notebook, P.S. I Love You is the story of a woman who has just lost her husband of nine years to cancer, only to discover that he arranged for a series of letters to be delivered to her by various means over the course of the next year. The letters are meant to help her get over him.

We're instead treated to the story of how they met, fell in love and were perfect for one another. All while another man is trying to court her. And while incredibly sappy, the movie is all over the place emotionally, with the main character going into sudden fits of madness only to inject tension in a story that otherwise lacks it. While most films of this nature end with the death of a lover, this movie almost opens with it. And lacking much else to really cause conflict, Swank occasionally becomes mysteriously unmanageable whenever it's convenient.

The film's one saving grace is the far-too-talented-to-be-so-underused Harry Connick Jr., who plays Swank's new suitor, the hilarious Daniel. And while Daniel's complete lack of an appropriateness filter makes for some great character pieces, we're supposed to feel sorry for this poor guy who has fallen in love with a woman at the wrong period of her life, when she can't stop thinking about and comparing him to her husband. Of course, it would be a lot easier to feel for him had he not tried to first pick her up at her husband's wake. Yeah, this is an example of the kind of strange (but not quite "quirky") characters that fill this mess of a movie.

Making matters worse is the fact that the ending, probably the most important part of a romantic movie, feels pasted on, phony and entirely too convenient. A story like this, especially one about wrestling with notions of how to let go, really needs something poignant and touching to happen, but instead it just kind of ends with everything working out as it should, without it ever feeling earned. And really, that's what disappointed me most about this. I can handle cliché; I can handle schmaltz. But I like my characters to earn their rewards, not have them handed to them.

The disc is light on features, with a bit of the usual talking-head business and an interview with the young writer of the novel. One interesting feature is a cheesy short film teaching you how to play a game called SNAPS, which is something like a teenagers' version of sign language used to confuse people who don't know the game. It took me nearly three hours to get the song out of my head, so tread lightly here. The deleted scenes were a nice treat, though, with a few of them containing some really great character moments that I wish had appeared in the film -- particularly from Kathy Bates, who just doesn't get the kind of screen time she deserves here.

All in all this is a sweet and noble effort, but something of a misfire that I wish had been treated better. It's not bad, but it certainly isn't worthy of the talent involved.

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