disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (2 January 2013)

I had high hopes for this movie but was very disappointed. If the issue of mental illness is supposed to be one of the central themes of the film, why couldn't the production staff figure out something simple such as the pronunciation of the drug Trazadone? The drug is not pronounced TRAY-ZO-DONE but TRAAZ-A-DONE. I would expect a large budget film to have some fact-checking in place.
Secondly, the mental illness theme was never fleshed out. The Bradley Cooper character appeared to have a temper but no real mental illness. Jennifer Lawrence was slightly quirky but no more unusual than a typical young adult.
Comning from a family with bipolar and unipolar depression and borderline personalities, I have an idea of what mental illness looks like and this was not it.
Lastly, the film was trying too hard to be too many things. Was it a romantic comedy or a drama or something else? Disappointing movie.