Movie Review - p.s.

Today was Fathers' Day. My little girl woke up at 6am, excited at being able to put up her paper chains (complete with hand-drawn smiley faces saying "Have a Happy Day, Dad!) and lay out her macaroni-studded 'Super Dad' painting, a gold foil handmade card, a wrapped CD and a mud-cake from Michel's bakery.

She then urged me, at 6:15am, to immediately start work on Love Chunks' special Fathers' Day breakfast. He was subsequently treated to a breakfast of pancakes and warm strawberries, accompanied by his very favourite non-alcoholic beverage Farmers Union Iced Coffee at 6:30am, which I'm sure was exactly the time he wanted to get up on a Sunday having stayed up watching a horror movie until 2am. I cleaned up the mess, did the dishes, hung out a load of washing before he fulfilled LC's need to head over to Ray's Tent City for some new walking shoes. Bless his spunky little heart - this wee trip of course turned into a longer sojourn as he gazed longingly at the non-gas lights, three-burners, Colman coffee pots, fishing rods and explorer socks. By lunchtime, I was feeling rather tired and a bit grumpy; but I'm always excellent at hiding it. At least I thought I was until Dean said, "You know Carly and I can go to the zoo on our own. Why don't I drop you off at Rundle Street and you go see a movie instead?"

So I did. P.S. stars Laura Linney as a 39 year old university art teacher, Louise, who is shocked to discover one of the young men applying for her art course is the spitting image of her 17 year old boyfriend, who died many years earlier. F. Scott Feinstadt (played by Topher Grace) is quite happy to be instantly drawn into having sex with his potential teacher straight after their first interview.

He is immediately smitten, even though he's not quite sure what she's always on about; ie "Let's play a game. You're forty and a failed artist. You work at your uncle's used card yard." She tells him - eventually - that his art work is the same as her long-dead young boyfriend's, but in reality F. Scott is more rooted in the real world than she is. He eyes her ex's abstract work called "Mother and Child" and labels it for what it is - crap. When she tells him that her heart was broken by this boyfriend, he tells her: "So was everyone's in highschool."

Throw in Marcia Gay Harden (with post-twin-bearing hooters that make Samantha Perkins' two beauties look like mossie bites) as her bitchy old high school friend trying to score with F. Scott just as she did with Louise's old boyfriend; and Gabriel Byrne playing Louise's ex-husband trying to atone for his infidelity, and poor old lonely Louise doesn't know if she's Arthur or Martha.

Despite the story losing a bit of steam and addictiveness in the second half, Laura Linney is just too good for that weakness to mean much. She plays the vulnerable, delicate and confused thirty-something to perfection: the expressions on her face a worth several pages of unnecessary dialogue.

And Topher Grace - boy oh boy has he filled out and matured since playing the skinny-but-funny Eric Foreman on That 70s Show. Humina humina humina - and that's NOT something you'll hear too often from Margaret or David on The Movie Show! He plays the eager student very well, and is less complicated and more genuine that Louise considers him to be. I found myself sitting there, inhaling my KitKat one stick at a time, urging her: Go for it - shag him - love him - do him - he's WORTH it.

So there you go. It's definitely a chick-flick unless your male half can find some form of masculine identification with Gabriel Byrne as an ageing, recovering sex-addict and if he can endure the occasional 'pppphwoarr' when Topher's on the screen.