Silver Linings Playbook was a great movie I would have seen if I had done more research ahead of time. I have known for months now that Jennifer Lawrence is a candidate, if not the favorite, for this year’s Best Actress Academy Award and that Bradley Cooper could snag one of the five nominations in the Best Actor category. The movie might land a spot in the Best Picture category, though it would have little chance of winning. So the Oscar buzz was one reason that got me to the theater. The other was that the movie centered on mental illnesses and broken relationships. Those movies often, but not always, engross me. I saw drama and comedy as words associated with this movie. Perhaps naively, I did not see a romantic comedy. While there was a bit of drama and some attempts at comedy (which I found to be weak), this slowly but surely turned into a romance. By the movie’s conclusion, I was very, very okay with that. Though flawed at times, it came together nicely and felt reasonably original to me. If ten movies are nominated for Best Picture this year, Silver Linings Playbook will and should be one of them.
Bradley Cooper (The Hangover, Limitless) is slowly creeping up my list of favorite actors. Unfortunately, he is nowhere close to being in that exclusive top 10 actors list. He’s probably not even in the top 25. But I enjoyed him in The Hangover movies and was impressed with his performance in Limitless. He stunk in The A-Team, but that was mainly because The A-Team was a terrible movie. Nobody in that movie benefited from its existence. In Silver Linings Playbook, Cooper plays Pat, a bipolar yet upbeat man we meet in a mental institution. He has been institutionalized for the past eight months after beating his colleague nearly to death after he caught him having sex with his wife in his bedroom shower.
Despite the wishes of his doctors, Pat is released to his caring yet cautious mother, Delores (Jacki Weaver – Animal Kingdom, The Five-Year Engagement). When he arrives home, we learn that his father, Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro – Raging Bull, Cape Fear), was unaware of his wife’s plan. Pat Sr. is a bit of a mess but has himself more together than his son. He is an addicted gambler with obsessive-compulsive disorder tendencies, especially concerning his beloved Philadelphia Eagles. Whatever rituals seem to work, whether it’s wearing the same shirt each Sunday or placing the remote controls in a certain way, that’s what Patrick Sr. does. His love for his wife is evident. The love for his son is present, but it isn’t perfect. He doesn’t know how to talk to his son in a way that provides a real connection. Pat Sr. is a kooky guy.
The story’s primary focus is getting Pat Jr.’s life back on track. He is determined to get his wife back, even though he has a 500-yard restraining order against him. He is more than persistent, though. He is obsessive. He reads all the books on the high school syllabus of the course she teaches. He does his best to stay out of trouble with the law because he knows anything he does will get back to her via a police report. He tries to get into the best physical shape of his life by running each day (while wearing a plastic trash bag to help him sweat more) while trying his best to avoid “trigger points,” things that will set him off. Pat Jr. has mandatory meetings with his psychiatrist but doesn’t want to take his medication.
Along the way, he meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence – The Hunger Games, Winter’s Bone). Tiffany is the younger sister of Veronica (Julia Stiles – Save the Last Dance, The Bourne Identity). While Veronica seems to have everything together, Tiffany’s life is a complete mess. She’s a young widow who has dealt with the death of her husband by sleeping with so many people in her office that she got fired. She’s developed a nasty reputation around town due to her actions. Veronica and her husband Ronnie (John Ortiz – Public Enemies, American Gangster) have the plan to set Pat and Tiffany up. The two are like oil and water, though. When off his medication, Pat has absolutely no filter between his brain and mouth, while Tiffany is quick to jump the gone and draw her own conclusions based on the comments and behaviors of others.
In any case, Tiffany devises a plan in which she will deliver a letter to his wife (since he isn’t allowed any contact with her, nor is he allowed within 500 feet of her) if he will be her partner in an upcoming dance competition. Reluctantly, Pat agrees. It is his only chance of any connection with his wife. So this oddball couple does what it needs to do to keep each other’s promises and, along the way, strike up a friendship, though a bizarre one. Both were not just in need of a friend but some visual connection with someone else in the world who seemed as messed up as they were. Both have been prescribed just about every medication out there. But they have that connection, and it feels like it is enough to form a solid base for a relationship.
The movie isn’t perfect, but it’s good. In this particular movie, I can sense a few more flaws than the average person can detect. Part of that has to do with the time limitations. I’m curious to read the book by Matthew Quick that the movie was based on. I would like to see how he slowed down the parts that went too fast in the film. Also, there were many little side stories that added some comedic elements to the film but also took away from its core. Finally, I would have liked the movie to focus on Pat Jr. and his relationships with those other characters. Still, I didn’t care as much about the relationships those other characters had with each other.
***Spoiler Alert***
Director David O’Russell (The Fighter, Three Kings) does a great job distinguishing what Pat Jr. is like when he is off his medication versus when he is on his medication but assumes too much. There are enough events to show how out of control and unpredictable Pat can be when he is off his medication. We see him take his medication after a series of events that forced Pat to realize he just wasn’t okay without his medication. The problem was that we only saw him take medicine once. After that, we saw him slowly get better, and his mood swings were minimized. But it would have been so great to see a good day, followed by taking the medication, followed by another good day. Pat Jr. goes from being a mental wreck and having no real control of his life to somebody, by the end of the movie, who is not perfect but is much more stable. Please show us that the medication is working. If we had looked down for five seconds in the movie, we would have missed his first medication intake.
***End spoiler***
A good film overall that will get lots of nominations this awards season. Some great individual performances. Lawrence will get nominated, which she probably deserves. De Niro will get nominated. And Cooper might even get some votes.
Plot 10/10
Character Development 7.5/10
Character Chemistry 7.5/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 9/10
Directing 7/10
Cinematography 8/10
Sound 8/10
Hook and Reel 10/10
Universal Relevance 10/10
88%
Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie