4.5 out of 5
One of the strongest pleasures of Silver Linings Playbook - and there are a lot of them - is the way the movie manages to be both a solid crowd pleaser and yet still be idiosyncratic, uncomfortable, and more honest than you might expect. Here's a movie about a mentally ill man whose marriage has fallen apart as a result of that illness (and, to be fair, some infidelity on her part); while working to pull that marriage back together, he meets a widow still deep in the grieving process and begins a friendship that could be more. That sounds like pure crowd-pleasing formula, and in a lot of ways, Silver Linings Playbook meets those expectations. But while many movies would use the manic depression that drives the main characters here for laughs or cheap pathos, writer/director David O. Russell and his cast allow the illness to be brought out with all of its difficulties, pain, and discomfort. (To borrow a great distinction from Scott Tobias's review, the movie knows the difference between "movie crazy" and "real world crazy," and focuses more on the latter than the former.) Without the strong performances, though, the movie wouldn't work, which is why both Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence deserve so much praise and attention for the work they put in. Cooper plays a man in complete denial about his mental problems and the state of his marriage, and between his intensity, anti-social tendencies, and inability to restrain his thoughts, he brings an intensity and discomfort to the film that makes it crackle throughout. But he's matched beautifully by Lawrence, who turns her character into someone far more nuanced and heartbreaking than you might expect, even while allowing her to - gasp! - be a sexual human being and a woman with her own mind and beliefs. If that's not enough, you get Chris Tucker turning in a restrained, wonderful performance, Robert Ortiz from Luck continuing what will hopefully be a long career, and Robert De Niro reminding you just how great he can be when he really tries. Silver Linings Playbook ends up walking that thin line between "arthouse cinema" and "crowd pleaser," and the remarkable thing is that it pulls it off, creating something that's profound in its honestly, unflinching in its honesty, and genuinely winning in its emotion. It's a great movie, and one of the most pleasant surprises of the year, I think.
- Josh Mauthe
- Josh Mauthe