I don't know if a lot of people know this about me, but occasionally I have been known to take one for the team, and suffer through a chick flick every now and again. Actually, I think as men, especially with girlfriends, it's kind of something you just have to bite the bullet and do once in a while. Unfortunately, I think it is sorta like a rule. You know, to keep the woman happy, score brownie points, and things of the like. So last night, I had prepared myself to digest up to two hours of chick flick glory. Because as dudes, you really must take time to prep for something like that. The movie selection for the evening was 'P.S. I Love You.'
At first glance it didn't look that bad. (Found out later that it only got a 21% rating on RottenTomatoes.com, which is actually pretty low.) Hillary Swank was in it, and she ranks about a 6.5 on my personal "Is She Hot?" scale. Anything above a 6 can make watching any movie (chick flick or not) at the very least, tolerable. And the other main dude in it was Gerard Butler. As a fellow manly man, I loved his work in 300, which is one of my favorite manly movies of all time.
Now I never really pretend to be a "film critic" or know what the hell I'm talking about when it comes to the (in my best pretentious, scholarly, professor-like accent) fine art of the cinema. I just like to think that I know a good flick (chick or otherwise) when I see one. This one was just not very good. In fact, Made of Honor, which I went to see a few weeks ago, generally speaking, was a much better movie in my opinion. (I think I actually just felt physical pain when I typed that last sentence.)
Random thoughts about the movie: this is supposed to be a love story, but you never really get depth of Swank's and Butler's romance, and the movie doesn't spend any time on it; Swank thinks she is in love with Harry Connick Jr's character at the end of the movie, only to find out that she really truly loves some bandmate of her dead husband's that she met on a trip to Ireland...made no sense whatsoever; I guess her dead husband wanted her to meet and hook up with his best friend back in Ireland, but that just seems really really creepy; Lisa Kudrow and her character were annoying as hell, and Gina Gershon's character was not hot enough; although it's a great, wonderful story about how a husband plans to deliver letters to his widow for up to two years after he dies, this actually happening is nearly unbelievable; finally, this movie was way too long, running just past two hours.
The best part of the movie was how the last song that played as the movie wrapped up was If I Ever Leave This World Alive by Flogging Molly. Great song by a great band. It almost made the entire movie worth watching again.
The key word is almost.
