"Critics" "Love" P.S. I Love You

There is a vast and formless void separating "true" and "the truth." And the new ad for P.S. I Love You falls squarely into that abyss.

The ad in question declares, proudly, that "critics across the country are falling in love with P.S. I Love You." In the background, a string of gushing comments scroll across the screen, adorned with quote marks... but not attributions.

Then, a few attributed remarks pop up. The praise is exuberant but vague, and the attributions are printed in 4-point text, clearly legible only when examined with a high quality magnifying lens. Figuring prominently are Westwood One and ABC-TV — polite ways of saying "small-market television hacks."

So, it's true. Critics (those who write about movies) across the country (at least a couple of states) said favorable things about this film. The truth, however, is more complicated.

Which is a polite way of saying critics think P.S. I Love You is a ball of shit. Not a neat, tidy, ready-for-disposal ball of shit, either. No, this is one particularly unpleasant ball of shit you don't want to take home for Hanukkah.

The film rates a humbling 21 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, a site dedicated to finding a critical consensus through the mass analysis of slews of critics. Twenty-one percent puts P.S. I Love You below Alvin and the Chipmunks and well below National Treasure: Book of Secrets. That's not even the worst aspect of the assessment. The RT "Cream of the Crop" section — which summarizes the judgment of professional critics at big media outlets — gives the film 8 percent. Granted, 8 points higher than One Missed Call, but not exactly Academy Award material.

What does 8 percent from Cream of the Crop look like?

This is a movie that will leave you stunned and stupefied from beginning to end, if you don't head for the exits first.

David Wiegand
San Francisco Chronicle

A mostly overheated farrago of sentiment, self-help and romantic cliche.

Gene Seymour
Newsday

There's zero chemistry between P.S. I Love You's two commodified headliners.

Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

And, of course, the obligatory zinger pun off of the name of the film.

B.S. I Love You would be a more accurate title.

Jonathan Rosenbaum
Chicago Reader

Ha!

Adjectives like "excruciating" and "sappy" make up the remainder of the coverage. Even Richard Roeper only found "just enough... to recommend" the film. Richard. Roeper.

This makes the ad admirable for its ballsyness. Most bad movies have the cojones to throw a couple "Westwood One" or "ABC-TV" ad endorsements into the mix, but few have structured the entire ad as a grateful, gushing "thank you" to the critical community for its unqualified love... ala the love that a good film such as Juno or Atonement might deserve.

The thing is, most viewers of the P.S. I Love You spot won't have the time, inclination or experience to check the "critics love" claim against a website that actually determines, down to the percentage point, the extent to which critics actually love a particular movie. So, it's a smart ad. And it's true. It's just not the truth.