Well-done dramedy

Rating: 8/10 (15 August 2017)

"Silver Linings Playbook" follows as Pat Solitano, Jr.'s (Bradley Cooper) return to his football-obsessed family following an eight month stint in a mental health facility for bipolar disorder. He 'meets cute' with Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence), who is dealing with her own mental issues following the death of her husband, and the rest of the film follows their developing relationship. Well-written and uniformly well-acted, the film (and presumably the source-material) does a fine job in superimposing a light-weight romantic comedy (which could have been lifted out of innumerable 30's musicals) over the complexities and difficulties of dealing with mental health. I have no immediate experience with bipolar disorder but I thought that Cooper's portrayal of an unstable man fixated on his ex-wife was excellent. DeNiro's superstitious football-bookie father was a great character (and proves that the legendary actor need not do any "Dirty Grampa" sequels to remain employed).