Silver Linings Playbook

Based on the (superior) novel by Matthew Quick, Silver Linings Playbook follows Bradley Cooper’s Pat Solitano as he attempts to get his life back on track after being released from a mental hospital – with the movie exploring Pat’s relationships with the various people in his life, including his obsessive-compulsive father (Robert De Niro’s Pat) and his neighbor/potential love interest (Jennifer Lawrence’s Tiffany). Filmmaker David O. Russell has infused Silver Linings Playbook with a typically offbeat and deliberately-paced feel that is, at the outset, not terribly troublesome, as the writer/director admittedly does a nice job of establishing (and developing) the various supporting characters and eliciting a career-best performance from Cooper. (In terms of the former, the movie boasts appearances from an agreeably eclectic selection of actors – including Jacki Weaver, Julia Stiles, and Chris Tucker.) But Russell’s notoriously low-rent visual sensibilities become more and more problematic as time progresses, as the movie’s ugly appearance is, to an increasingly demonstrative degree, exacerbated by a hit-and-miss midsection and a meandering narrative – with, in terms of the latter, the film’s sheer overlength ensuring that many scenes come off as needlessly padded out or altogether superfluous. And although the proceedings have been peppered with a handful of standout sequences (eg Tiffany stands up to De Niro’s intimidating Pat), Silver Linings Playbook is ultimately unable to wholeheartedly become the feel-good romantic comedy that Russell has clearly intended – with the filmmaker’s inability to elicit any real emotional response from the viewer during either the climactic dance competition or the upbeat final stretch certainly indicative of the movie’s failings.

**1/2 out of ****