The trailer for Silver Linings Playbook is misleading. It makes the film look like a fairly light romantic comedy between two charismatic leads, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. The film is much darker than the trailer suggests, but the performances of the two main characters make it worth seeing.
Substitute teacher Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) begins the film in a mental institution. His life is in shambles. He has lost his home and his wife, and when his mother springs him from the mental institution, ends up back living in the attic of his parents’ home. Pat is bright, but bipolar with violent tendencies. We learn from his backstory that Nikki his wife had an affair with a fellow teacher and he came home early, found them in the shower together and beat the lover up. He ends up with a restraining order and incarceration in a psyche ward. [His response to his wife's infidelity seemed like pretty logical response.]
To win his wife back, Pat vows to read all the books his wife teaches. In a charming scene, he reads Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and becomes incensed that after the main character struggles to win the lady he loves all through the book, she dies at the end. "What kind of view of the world is that to teach kids?" he asks his parents as he compulsively awakens them in the middle of the night to express his outrage. His father says to have Hemingway apologize to them.
Pat lives in a crazy household. His father, played by Robert De Niro, has compulsive OCD. Out of a job, he bets on the Eagles football team, trying to make enough money to start a restaurant. He determines that his son's having returned home should bring him luck with his bets.
Cooper is charming and a compelling figure on the screen. The camera loves him (and so apparently does the director who devotes a lot of film time to closeup on his expressive face). He meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a widow whose response to her husband's death had been to turn to promiscuity. The two of them begin an awkward courtship, which Pat refuses to acknowledge because he is focused on winning his wife back. As the two develop a relationship, they have a charming scene where they compare their medications and the effects.
Pat eventually agrees to help Tiffany, who wants to enter a dance contest, if she will give Nikki a letter he has written to get her back. Reluctantly, he becomes her partner and the two of them focus on working together. As they learn to dance together and care about each other's needs, we feel they belong together. Pat just does not see it.
Eventually, his father loses money on an Eagles game and blames Pat. In order to help win back his loses, his father and his betting buddy parlay a bet that includes the points for a significant Eagles game against Dallas and the number of points Pat and Tiffany can garner in their dance competition.
Watching the couple perform at the dance contest may not be “Dancing with the Stars,” but it is one of the fun film dances of the last couple of years.
Cooper and Lawrence make this a highly enjoyable two hours.
Silver Linings Playbook (2012) *****
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