Inspiring drama with plenty of flair from start to finish

Rating: 8/10 (13 January 2013)

Truthfully, the only reason I watched this movie was to see how a seemingly cut-and-paste drama could land their director an Oscar nod above the more ambitious and creative Tarantino.
Silver Linings Playbook however deserves its Oscar nods, and almost even deserved that Best Director nod. With a nice realistic script and fantastic performances to follow, Silver Linings Playbook is one of the superior dramas of 2012 by combining plenty of raw emotion with charm and even some humor to ease the pain.
Bradley Cooper shines as a saddened bipolar man that moves in with his parents to try to get his life together. What follows are the interactions and behavioral changes amongst everyone around him after the several months he spent away in psychiatric care. And along the way he meets a woman (Jennifer Lawrence) that might be equally as much of a mess, but also equally in need of a good friend. Based off a Matthew Quick novel, it's much more drama than anything else but the characters will grow on you and will have you rooting for them on the final act.
David O. Russell is getting quite good at pulling off great performances from his cast, as he got a couple Oscars from his last movie The Fighter. This time around Bradley Cooper gives the best performance of his career by providing layers of likability even during his worst of moments and moments of detachment, while Jennifer Lawrence and Robert DeNrio are expectedly but still undeniably electric.
The chemistry amongst everyone in the film is what carries this movie throughout and past the dimmest and slowest of moments, when the movie starts to drag a bit in the final third. Russell doesn't have much to work with to flex the directing muscles, but gets the job done by providing calm basic cinematography while also tugging the heartstrings when necessary.
Overall, this movie is a good drama, pure and simple. It never becomes overly complex and bloated, it's just a straight up entertaining drama with an assortment of standout moments that swings past all the issues of running time and some fluff scenes. Silver Linings Playbook is a grounded drama that stands as one of the best of the year.