A trainload of corn syrup and chicken schmaltz derailed

Rating: 3/10 (18 May 2013)

I just don't see what was so great about this film, except it was A list budget so it could hire good actors & other stuff to make it a polished work. Don't get me wrong, I like romantic comedies, chick flicks and predictable happy endings. Not every movie has to be some apocalyptic epic full of extreme violence, gore, the undead and mass explosions. But this movie was so full of sugar, it could rot your teeth out. Don't get me wrong, mental illness doesn't have to be treated reverently in some melodramatic fashion, but this movie had about as much relation to real mental illness and sufferers as "Hogan's Heroes" had to WW 2 POWs.
Apparently everyone around Pat Jr, the Bradley Cooper character, seemed to be pulling for him, ready to bend over backwards to help him out. The whole upper working class neighborhood milieu, were Philadelphia Eagles football fans. His father, Pat Sr. my fave De Niro, was the only saving grace in the movie. Dad was an uber superstitious football fan & bookie too. The Sunday game was the center of family life. Even the local cop, who showed up every time he was almost going to violate the restraining order of his ex wife or the frequent heated arguments he got into with parents and locals, was on his side, pulling for him. The multicultural crew included his Indian shrink, who was also a Philly Eagle fan like everyone else, and Chris Tucker, a black fellow inmate from the mental institute who was around for PC comic relief as a semi permanent guest at the Solitano residence. No racism here. The only one who wasn't a foot ball van was Tiffany, played by Jennifer Lawrence, the widowed bipolar nympho. I like her a lot too, but I simply don't see her work as Oscar material just because the movie sucked so bad.
The whole plot seemed to be, if you fall in love with the other mentally disturbed woman who wants you, and give up trying to win back your cheating ex wife. all will be well. There was no sense that the two were working on their mental health issues at all. No breakthroughs, no growing up, no revealing group therapy scenes. Compare that to dated-due-to-the-breakdown of the family "Ordinary People" I watched recently. While that was a drama, it won an Oscar by having some realism and recovery, not by pretending that romantic love is the mental health panacea. Here, the families will all love you and dad will win his bet and get enough money to buy the restaurant and the two losers will live happily ever after at their parent's house, doing an occasional dance contest. The two beautiful mental patients will finally declare their love for each other on a Holiday Season decorated city street at night right out of an old MGM musical.
Even the whole dance contest, the crux of the budding Pat & Tiffany relationship, was given short shrift. The DVD had tons of deleted scenes of the two practicing but that was all cut out in the theatrical version. There was simply too much schmaltz for me to take seriously! And what were the plays in that lined play book anyways?