This refreshing and inventive character piece fared pretty well at the Oscars. Best Actor nominee Bradley Cooper stars alongside Best Actress winner Jennifer Lawrence and Best Supporting nominees Robert De Niro and Jackie Weaver. So, is Silver Linings Playbook Oscar worthy? Lawrence certainly deserves the award and on the night, all the central performances are good enough to have been winners.
Silver Linings Playbook focuses on the dysfunctional relationship between recently released out-patient Pat (played by Bradley Cooper) and Jennifer Lawrence’s recently widowed sister of his best friend’s wife, Tiffany. While learning to live with his recently diagnosed condition, David O Russell’s touching screenplay (based on Matthew Quick’s novel) follows Cooper as he tries to rebuild his life and repair his marriage. Alongside his recovery, Cooper makes an unlikely connection with Jennifer Lawrence, and they begin dating (awkwardly). Some great dialogue mixes well with genuinely touching moments, some memorably funny scenes and car-crash outbursts. David O Russell was unlucky not to have picked up best adapted screenplay over Argo.
David O Russell’s direction is tight and he keeps a good pace throughout the film. Crucially, as well as a tremendous cast, he gets two difficult things just right. He treats mental illness sympathetically and respectfully, and though we do get a happy ending, Silver Linings Playbook never feels corny. The film and cast have a stripped down realism, set in a blue collar Philadelphia neighborhood, where life revolves around the local football team, the Philly Eagles. Robert De Niro is utterly absorbing as Pat’s father, the football-obsessed bookmaker, whose unusual superstitions on game day verge on the obsessive compulsive. De Niro looks older, and his earthy, subtle performance reminds us that the best actors can step out of ‘big character’ roles and play everyday folks.
Silver Linings Playbook is much funnier than I expected, and there is a wide cast of characters and events that prevent the film becoming either claustrophobic or predictable. Around the central story, there are a range of unusual and well-acted characters. Chris Tucker puts in a great turn as Danny, Cooper’s friend from the institution. Anupan Kher is fantastic as Cooper’s therapist and fellow Eagles fan. Shea Whigham is convincing as Cooper’s brother. Julia Stiles and John Ortiz are great as Cooper’s long-suffering friends. Jackie Weaver is excellent as Cooper’s mother, and hers is perhaps the most demanding role as she teeters between love and desperation, struggling to hold her family together.
As Cooper and Lawrence begin to find common ground, the reality of his breakdown and the incident which broke up his marriage are gradually revealed. As Cooper’s quest to get his life back on track develops, he makes a deal with Lawrence. She agrees to bypass the restraining order on him by sneaking a letter to his wife. In return, Cooper agrees to help Lawrence enter a dance competition and so together, they train in her home studio. While this is going on, De Niro decides to go all out for one big gamble on the Eagles, in order to quit his shady dealings and open a family restaurant with the proceeds. A bizarre deal is then struck with De Niro’s gambling buddy Randy (played by Paul Herman) that both an Eagles win and a score of 5.0 or higher at the dance contest will give him the overall win. As with any romantic comedy, you more or less know what will happen in the end, but in this case, how you get there is certainly original. Silver Linings Playbook is an uniquely funny and uplifting film about damaged human beings and is well worth catching at the theater.
Rating: 8/10
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