Doesn't know what to do with itself

Rating: 4/10 (10 January 2013)

I felt this film was a mess. It starts out promising, with Bradley Cooper's slightly off-kilter gaze proving quite unsettling. You know he's been through a lot, and he knows it, too. We wonder what his next move will be--as does he. In the meantime, he's doing meaningful work with his shrink, who takes his job seriously.
But then he meets The Girl, and the movie slowly morphs into a madcap romantic farce. Goofy parents get involved, the shrink becomes a drinking buddy, and all sense of seriousness vanishes. The scene in Cooper's living room stretches on endlessly as subplot after subplot play out, and drama and comedy are mixed so you don't know how you're supposed to feel about any of it. Is this Rain Man or Abbott and Costello?
The old saw in movies used to be, Boy Gets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl Back. Nowadays, it's Boy Gets Girl But Is Too Stupid to Realize It Until She Knocks Some Sense Into His Head. Of course, this rarely happens in real life. Silver Linings has The Girl for a while and then loses her, but neither the writers nor the director were able to get her back.