Critic's Grade: D

It's not a very good thing when, in a movie like "To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday," the character that remains a figment of another's imagination is the one making more sense than those who live and breathe. That character is Gillian herself, the deceased wife of a man named David who refuses to let go of a very unstable and thoroughly deranged fantasy that she visits him to offer him solace, comfort, advice, etc. The movie tries with every fiber of its being to convert our inhibitions into a realization that David is ultimately to overcome his grief, but its attempts are so sloppy, ill-conceived, and emotionally flat that we never once care about anything this person experiences.

In addition to that, the overall experience remains one of the worst movies I've seen in my life, a cookie-cutter valentine about lost love and moving on that only serves to portray each and every character in a negative light. There's the obvious character of David (Peter Gallagher), whose delusional moments of bliss with his dead wife (played by Michelle Pfeiffer) make him look all the more silly and "loony," and then there's his daughter, Rachel (Claire Danes), who seems level-headed enough, but is never really expanded upon as she should be (case in point: it's not recommended that the character's sole winning scene involves her throwing up on her father's bare feet as a result of drinking too much).

The movie derives its story from the characters of David's in-laws. There's Gillian's sister, Esther (Kathy Baker), who insists that David's behavior is unhealthy for Rachel, and wants to take custody away from him until he gets his life back together. And then there's her husband, Paul (Bruce Altman), a sex-starved hornball who has his wandering eye on Rachel's best friend, who prances around the entire movie spouting ludicrous dialogue about sex, men, sex, men, sex, and oh, men. And what about the character of Kevin (Wendy Crewson), a purposeless ploy on the part of the in-laws at matching David up with someone else?

The way in which the story paints these characters is a classic case of pure cliche. I still do not understand why there was any need for a subplot involving the in-laws trying to make sense of their loveless marriage, nor a scene in which the best friend character attempts to seduce Paul to prove a point about his faithfulness. Esther is the typically cold and distant wife whose intentions of protecting her niece's future well-being are the more agreeable arrangement, but not so here, since the movie is a tear-jerker and we're supposed to play by its rules. She is the one who makes more sense than her brother-in-law, but the movie takes that away from her by focusing on David's self-manufactured grief, and turning it into a ploy for sentiment and compassion. And that's where things get really ugly.

Consider the movie's most damning sequence, a beach walk during which David is visited by Gillian. He asks her, "You don't want me to let you go, do you?" to which she replies, "You can't ask me questions like that. You know my wants, or what I say I want is really what you want me to want, because I'm here right now only in your mind. You only ask me questions you don't want the answers to." And there you have it, right there, the case for David's unblinking insanity out of the mouth of his own imaginary companion.

Or maybe she's not. Maybe she's really a ghost, a tactic the movie seems urgent to toy with in later scenes and ongoing conversations; why else would there be a scene in which she appears to Rachel? Oh, that's right: David's influence on her is causing her own mental state to deteriorate, but then, he's only trying to survive his grief. Whatever the case may be, I didn't believe in a minute of it, due to the fact that there is no convincing emotion in any of these characters. Maybe the whole conception of "To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday" carried some measure of promise at one point during its creation; all I know is that the final product is an emotionally confused, lifeless piece of work that does little to move us, shake us, or just plain entertain us.

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