Maybe it goes along with the perils of naming your movie after an afterthought, but PS I Love You is a film with such a serious identity crisis that it feels like different members of the cast believe that they're making completely different films. Oscar winner Hilary Swank is convinced that she's in a drama about a far-too-young widow dealing with the passing of her rebellious husband, played by 300's Gerard Butler. Lisa Kudrow and Gina Gershon are in a wacky "girl comedy" like the countless ones that appeared in the wake of Sex and the City. Harry Connick Jr. doesn't seem to be sure what movie he's actually in, but it's the most interesting of the three.

Writer/director Richard LaGravenese (Living Out Loud) opens PS I Love You very promisingly, as we meet Holly and Gerry Kennedy (Swank and Butler) in the middle of a serious fight. For nearly ten minutes, LaGravenese doesn't do anything sweet or cutesy, seemingly trying to tackle the serious issues that come along with being near-30 and not sure what you want from this world. Swank and Butler have good chemistry, making a believable married couple, and all the memories of the goofy behavior that have dominated the commercials for this film begin to fall away. For a few moments, it feels like a real movie about real people might unspool, which would've been such a pleasant surprise. But that opening tease only makes what comes after the credits that much more frustrating.

After the opening credits, Gerry is dead. He haunts his widow both physically and through a series of letters that instruct her to try and break out of her shell, pleasantly goading his widowed wife into getting over her pain. Holly has no idea how the letters are coming, but decides that she must follow all of their instructions, with the help of her friends Denise (Lisa Kudrow) and Sharon (Gina Gershon). Kathy Bates plays Holly's mother and Connick plays the awkward new guy in her life who may have stronger feelings than friendship for our heroine.

Like a lot of books-turned-movies, PS I Love You tries to be so many things to so many people that it ends up being mostly nothing at all. The movie never finds the believability of that first pre-credits scene again, going through so many different moods and styles that none of them stick. Real scenes of regret or loss are followed by some of the most awkward physical comedy in years (there's a horribly written scene on a stranded boat that's one of the worst in a long time). Characters flit in and out merely to serve the purpose of Gerry's letter plan, and the underused Kudrow and Gershon are reduced to nothing more than plot devices to resolve Holly's state of indecision. It's not a spoiler to say one gets married and one gets pregnant. Too bad neither feels like a real character.

The men actually fare better in PS I Love You than the women. Butler takes a role about as far from 300 as possible, proving that this breakthrough star has some range, and character actors like James Marsters, Dean Winters, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan are appropriately charming. Swank does her best, but she seems lost in the movie's identity crisis, taking the project seriously one moment and doing a pratfall off a karaoke stage the next. After the year she's had - Freedom Writers, The Reaping, and now this one - Swank needs to talk to her agent before the luster on her Oscars gets any muddier.