A Glorified Romantic Comedy

Rating: 7/10 (21 January 2013)

After a stint in a mental institution, former teacher Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) moves back in with his parents and tries to reconcile with his ex-wife. Things get more challenging when Pat meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a mysterious girl with problems of her own.
I hate to be the guy who comes along and talks bad about a film that is sitting in the IMDb Top 250 and is drowning in Oscar nominations, but I simply cannot understand the buzz around this picture. Is it funny? Yes, it is. Is it romantic? I suppose it could be. Is it enjoyable? Sure. But what does it offer for anyone who wants substance in their films? Not much.
The big problem is that the film starts off having you think it will be about mental illness, or a man coping with mental illness. And for the first third of the film, that is more or less what we get. Unfortunately, by the time we are a third of the way in, Pat is mysteriously "cured". While he still has an obsession with reuniting with his wife, he no longer has outbursts or does erratic things and if he is bi-polar there is no way we as the audience could know.
This cover story of mental illness (which would have made a good film), poorly disguises the actual plot: a romantic comedy that follows the tired, well-worn story of a man who is attracted to one woman while unknowingly falling for the woman he is with, who he foolishly thinks is only his friend. If the audience thinks, after meeting Tiffany, that Pat is going to end up with his wife rather than Tiffany, they are naive. (Heck, even that would have made a good twist, albeit a small one.)
Somehow Cooper is nominated, despite not really acting after the mental illness part. He is no Michael Shannon. For most of the film, he is simply Bradley Cooper playing Bradley Cooper. Jennifer Lawrence is more deserving (she already took the Golden Globe), as she actually tries to appear unstable. And despite being a mess and with a bad sexual history, she still manages to be somewhat likable... somewhat like Holly Golightly (but not at all like Julia Roberts) perhaps? The trend of casting a female lead 16 years the male lead's junior persists, but Lawrence can play older than she is, and while this is not on the level of her performance in "Winter's Bone", she definitely is on a winning streak.
The subplot with Pat Senior (Robert DeNiro) is pretty awful. We have an old Italian-American falling into the stereotypical role of bookmaker. And who do they cast? DeNiro, who has already been typecast as the mobster. How he was nominated is beyond me, as this is even further down his slide into irrelevancy. This was more the DeNiro of "Meet the Fockers" than "Raging Bull", and he has to be aware that any nomination is done out of respect more than from actually earning it. When Pat Senior winds in a parlay situation where he needs to win both a football game and dance contest, we know exactly how that is going to play out... this is, after all, a fantasy world where nothing bad can happen to our protagonists, no matter how tarnished their lives may be.
I know I am in the minority for opposing this film. But seriously, despite being fun and cute, what does it have going for it? It made every attempt it could to avoid any real conflict, never seriously trying to tackle family issues, mental illness, gambling addiction or anything else... an opportunity squandered.