By Cody Steffen
Silver Linings Playbook is a nervous romance starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. They have issues. Patrick (Cooper) is bipolar and assaulted a man who he walked in on having an affair with his wife, the movie starts with his release from a psychiatric hospital. Tiffany (Lawrence) is undiagnosed, but has taken to sleeping around with as many people as possible to dull the pain of losing her husband.
Patrick, we learn quickly, is attempting to reconcile his relationship with his wife. He walked in on his wife having an affair and brutally assaulted the man involved, landing him in court ordered rehabilitation. He's convinced that it's only a matter of time before his wife accepts him back, despite constant reminders from his friends, family, and one timely police officer that she has a restraining order against him and he's not to contact her.
Upon returning home to his parents house, Patrick's father (played by Robert De Niro) is skeptical about his son's readiness to rejoin society. He's also an obsessive fan of the Philadelphia Eagles and has resorted to placing superstitious bets on their games every week in order to make a living. At it's core, Silver Linings is dysfunctional.
Like 2004's Garden State the two leads bond over their baggage. They enter each other's lives at just the right time and it's clear from the get-go that they're meant for each other. Silver Linings, however, treats the mental illnesses of these leads seriously. There's an uneasiness to every scene. Patrick and Tiffany push each other and teeter on the edge of chaos, where the entire movie lives. Soon, they develop a plan to help each other. Expectations are set in place, raised, and destroyed in their effort to find a balance.
We, the seasoned movie-goers, can safely predict how the plot's going to shake out based on our familiarity with the Hollywood romantic comedy, but Silver Lining's success lies in director David O. Russell and his terrific team of actors' ability to cast doubt over our assumptions. Underlying turmoil is always visible just below the surface, but Russell maintains control over it. It's up to Patrick and Tiffany to do the same.
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