What was that?

Rating: 4/10 (11 June 2013)

Like other reviewers, I had high expectations for this movie. I didn't know anything about the plot, I just saw short previews and really wanted to see it because I am a huge Jennifer Lawrence fan and what girl doesn't swoon for Bradley Cooper? I was even more excited to see it when I found out Jennifer won a best actress Oscar for this role. I was so disappointed!
The movie ends up being about Bradley Cooper (I forget the characters name) who catches his wife cheating on him in the shower of his home, and upon confronting them, the man she is cheating on him with tells him to leave. This sends Brad into a rage and he snaps mentally and beats him within an inch of his life. He is sent to a mental institution and is released about a year later. He returns to his parents home in Philly, and you slowly start to think that everyone in the town might be mentally unstable. His mom is an impossibly annoying woman who doesn't seem to have a backbone and lets her extremely OCD husband walk all over her. The dad is played by Robert DiNero, whom I had no idea was in the movie, so that was a nice surprise. This does seem to be the only movie that he is fully engaged in, and he plays his character very well, but to the point where you almost hate him. He bets on The Eagles' football games and has to have a remote placed in a certain spot and facing a certain direction. Brad is out of his mind weird, and although it was refreshing to see him playing such a different character, you just get so frustrated with the character and you find yourself wishing for the movie to end. Brad wears a trash bag over sweats in almost every single scene because he runs, and you come to loathe trash bags.
Things do perk up a lot when he meets Jennifer, which comes into play because he goes over to his best friends house for dinner and his wife is the sister of Jennifer, who is played by Julia Styles. It was very nice to see her face again so that was something good about it. Jennifer also has mental issues, because her police husband died and she tends to say or do what she wants. She is a bit Gothic, but only a touch which is good because if she had been any more so I wouldn't have made it very far in the movie. Jennifer is, for lack of a better word, a slut. She is open about the fact that she sleeps with men and is not proud of it. She is great at adding life to the otherwise boring movie by throwing random tantrums and screaming.
Brad and Jen team up for an upcoming dance competition that is meant for professionals and they both know they don't stand a chance. They help heal each other by their dancing and there is a nice little twist at the end of the movie (which I will not spoil for anyone) that turns out she knew a lot more about what was really going on than anyone else did. The movie ends with Brad's dad making a major bet that the Eagles would win and also that Jen and Brad would score a 5 in the competition, which are on the same night.
All in all, the people I was watching this with were complaining loudly that they wanted it to end, and I was right there along with them. I don't really like watching movies about mentally unstable people and even more so about OCD people. I did really love Jennifer in it and thought she absolutely deserved the Oscar.