Silver Linings Playbook

Being in the loop...ish on good movies over the past couple years I've been doing this blog. I have a laundry list of movies that were either recommended to me, had critical acclaim slapped onto it, or just seemed like an interesting movie to look into. Silver Linings Playbook fell into all of these categories with the condition that the film seemed less interesting than a lot of movies that came out in 2012. 

Silver Linings Playbook is the story of Pat Solatano Jr. (played by Bradley Cooper) who, at the beginning of the film, is being released from a mental ward by his mother, despite the recommendations of the doctors at the institutions. We soon figure out the circumstances that led to him being institutionalized and that there is a restraining order against him from his wife and the place where he used to work. 

Pat has some form of bipolar disorder. I watched this with my girlfriend who is a psych major and

she had the correct technical terms for it. In short, he has a difficult time controlling his emotions and sometimes gets delusions.

This leads to some funny moments but also many very serious ones. He is disconnected from his family, his old life, and all he wants to do is reconnect with his wife and show her that he is better now, even though he may or may not be.

When Pat is invited to a dinner party by some old friends. He meets the wife's (played by Julia Stiles) sister, Tiffany (played by Jennifer Lawrence).

Tiffany also has a form of bipolar disorder... I think, and from the the get go, there's a strange uncomfortable chemistry between Pat and Tiffany. You know from the beginning, these two are going to end up together. That's the interesting part about this movie. In essence, its a romantic dramedy. Its a love story and really follows a lot of the formula of a romantic comedy. The part that distinguishes Silver Linings Playbook is the subject matter, especially with a subject like bipolar disorder and mood conditions.

The two immediately develop an unconventional friendship and soon Tiffany offers Pat a proposition. Since her sister is friends with Pat's wife, she might be able to get a letter to his wife. But in return, Pat must help Tiffany and participate as her partner in a dance competition.

The strange thing is, I heard a little bit about this dance competition when I first heard of this movie. I heard it was about two people with bipolar disorder in a dance competition. Honestly, that's not a fair synopsis of this movie. While the competition is an important part of the film, there is so much more to this movie.

And honestly, I think that's what makes it good.

This movie isn't about a dance competition, its not about an insane wager that is made (I'll get to that in a second), this movie is really about the characters. And damn, these are really good characters.

I mean I understand how Bradley Cooper, J Law, and Robert DeNiro were all nominated for an Academy Award from their performance in this movie, because they're all very, very good.

Let's talk about the obvious. Jennifer Lawrence.

She won an Oscar for this role. This is the role that set Lawrence apart from any franchise role she had ever been apart of, including Hunger Games and X-men, and made her a house hold name. This movie made her America's sweetheart.

And she deserved the Oscar. She's damn good in this movie. Her character is incredibly complex and you have moments where you feel bad for her and then you have moments where you think she's being unreasonable, and its just complex. She's just down right good in the role.

Now again, I watched this with my girlfriend and she was slightly disputing how accurate they were portraying people with this condition of bipolar disorder. I can't speak too much on that so I won't, but what I do know is that I saw a character with a lot of issues and I believed her. It was really a performance worthy of an Oscar and seeing it now, I totally understand the hype, I totally understand why she won.

I suppose the next part I can talk about is the performance of Bradley Cooper.

If you read my American Sniper review, you saw how much I praised Cooper for his performance in that. Even before that, in my American Hustle review, you'll know that I praised Cooper in that. Now I definitely think that American Sniper was his best performance I've seen, but this comes in an incredibly close second.

I don't know what it was but I was very hesitant to really like Bradley Cooper. Even after American Sniper, I was still iffy on it. I still kind of saw him as the Hangover guy who did a couple good performances and would probably be around for a while.

After this, I'm really forgetting every stigma The Hangover gave me of Cooper and really made me start seeing him as a credible actor because holy shit, the guy is amazing in this film. I think American Hustle made me think of him a little bit differently, American Sniper made me put him in a little bit higher of a category, but this film launches Bradley Cooper near the top as one of my favorite actors of today. In a way, he's very similar to Matthew McConaughey in that it took him a little bit but I think he's finally got his career underway and it'll be fun to see him in more and more good films in the coming years hopefully. I know really hope that someone finds Bradley Cooper a bigger role to play in some kind of superhero universe. As much as I love him as Rocket Raccoon, I think, in a way, its a little bit of waste right now not having him as a live action super hero. (Hint, hint, hint DC)

But the performance that didn't necessarily surprise me, and yet I didn't fully see it coming, was Robert De Niro.

Honestly, this is the first time in a long time that I have seen De Niro actually act and not just be a caricature of himself. I'm in no way saying that De Niro ever lost his touch or was ever a bad actor but its been a long time since I've seen De Niro in a role that I didn't just see De Niro, I saw a character.

And a really, really good character at that.

De Niro plays Pat's father, also named Pat, who has recently lost his job and now spends a lot of his time being a die hard fan for the Philadelphia Eagles. He believes that his son is a lucky charm and if he were to spend more time with his son, the Eagles would win more.

Now Pat Sr. also has a mood disorder and definitely a case of OCD. They mention it briefly but don't give it a proper name.

However, a lot of his superstitions and obsession with the Eagles is a cover for a incredible desire to spend quality time with his son. There's a great part where he wakes Pat up and just opens up to him. Its such an out of no where scene but its a scene where I just smiled and said, that's where De Niro has been this whole time! He's not doomed to being that guy from Meet the Parents his entire life, he's actually a great actor! Hurray!

However, this does open up to the one part of the movie I actually didn't like. I get why it needed to happen and everything that comes out of it is a lot of fun, but this one scene kind of disrupted what I thought was a pretty awesome movie.

Pat Sr. makes a bet against his friend with all his money. He has this desire to build a restaurant now that he is unemployed, but the money he's going to use to open that restaurant, he's putting on the Eagles winning one game, and he believes that since Pat Jr. is going to the game, the Eagles are going to win.

First of all, why is he allowed to gamble with that money? Maybe this is a complaint of the mom character who I wasn't wild about, but honestly, she's not that important and I don't need to love for this film to be good. But Pat Sr. is just allowed to make these bets based on a Football game, this seemed very stupid.

But when an incident occurs and Pat Jr. is not able to watch the game, Pat Sr. is about to lose it. He blames his son for a bet he shouldn't have made in the first place. Like I said, De Niro's character has a form of bipolar disorder but its always been a little downplayed with the exceptions of some outburst here and there. Pat has a moment where he says he shouldn't be compared to his father because his father is the one with incredible outbursts not him.

Here we're about to see one of these outbursts. And we sort of do, De Niro is being irrational, especially blaming Pat for the Eagles losing the game. And then Tiffany comes in angry at Pat for blowing off a dance rehearsal and De Niro loses his shit on her... but then she disproves his superstitions by saying if there is any juju on the Eagles, its being off set when Pat is with her, not with him.

It was a kind of funny moment, but I thought it really took away from some kind of character development with De Niro's character.

Furthermore, they challenge this family friend to let him win his money back with a double down bet. Saying that if the Eagles win against the Cowboys, and Pat and Tiffany get a 5 or higher on the dance competition, De Niro wins.

This bet was a stupid bet.

And honestly, De Niro losing his shit and getting mad at Pat for getting in trouble and "causing" the Eagles to win was contradictory of that beautiful moment between the two of them.

I personally think it was because of this strange exchange that I think De Niro was snubbed the Oscar from Christoph Waltz. Don't get me wrong, I like Waltz in Django, but if it was between De Niro and Waltz for the Oscar, I think De Niro should have won it instead.

But story-wise, this was just stupid. This family friend was taking advantage of De Niro, especially for a lot of money, and nobody was telling De Niro this was a dumb idea. I get that it was being used as a plot device to raise the stakes and make the ending more interesting, but for a movie that had felt so sincere and fluid, this part seemed very contrived for my taste. Which is a shame, because its really the only part of the movie I had a problem with.

This is a really well done movie. Its not my favorite only because its just not my usual style of movie. But its entertaining and its really well done. I think similar to the way American Hustle was a film that could have been just a run of the mill movie, in this case a romantic comedy, this movie instead took a different route and made it about something instead. Putting the story in the subject of people with mood disorders was a brave choice and it was executed very well with phenomenal actors. This movie was just a fun time all around and again, very well done.

But that's what I think of Silver Linings Playbook, what did you think? Comment and Discuss below! And if you're interested in getting updates on more movies and posts I'll be putting up on the blog, Follow me @cmhaugen24 on Twitter.

I'll leave you with this. Might as well do one of the clips of J Law... just because. Here's her on Jimmy Fallon. Enjoy!