Typical "mentally-diseased boy meets mentally-diseased girl" story.

Rating: 7/10 (31 August 2016)

Typical "mentally-diseased boy meets mentally-diseased girl" story. I already saw that one in Garden State in 2004. And that movie had a better soundtrack, too. Look: meeting a beautiful girl and falling in love doesn't instantly solve all of your problems. It sure as hell doesn't cure mental disease. In fact, it often causes mental disease when it ends in a tragic divorce or worse. Didn't both of the main characters end up messed up largely because of the people they were originally in love with? Bradley Cooper falls prey to aggressive, manic episodes whenever he hears his wedding song that reminds him of his wife's infidelity; and Jennifer Lawrence treats her depression, intensified by the death of her husband, by having sex with lots of people. The cinematography was pretty darn good--as I often find myself saying after watching films about mental disease/ psychoactive drugs/ etc. mind-altering states, the cinematography "made me feel like I was (insert mental disease/ psychoactive drug addiction/ etc. mind-altering circumstance) myself" (and in this case, "manic" filled in the blank--with "ADHD" also being appropriate). Cooper and Lawrence had good chemistry (mainly because they're both beautiful people) and some very real and probing dialogues happened here, but the overall narrative was unconvincing. Not enough struggle. Again, things don't just get better because you fall in love with some hot girl. My prognosis is that the aftermath of this film will not be all rainbows for our two smoking-hot protagonists.