Extremely Boring and Trite No-Drama, No-Comedy Starring "Married Creeps"

Rating: 1/10 (1 March 2013)

There is one adjective that describes this movie sufficiently: immature. After I finished watching this failure of a movie (inexplicably nominated for, and winning, lots of awards, including an Oscar), I started exploring where the immaturity comes from. Yeah, Jennifer Lawrence was very young when filming this, only 21, but she's just an actress -- you can't blame her for the screenplay she had to adhere to. The director and screenwriter is a 50-ish guy, too. So, what's the answer? Ah yes, there it is: the original novel was a debut novel by Matthew Quick, released when the writer was just 32 years old. Oh Lord, but it shows. (An interesting tidbit is how old-fashioned the 2012-released movie seems in extolling the "iPod": right, only a few years later after the original story takes place in 2008, iPods seem rather behind-the-times compared to iPhones and iPads.)
The movie is not just immature, but chock-full with every Hollywood cliché you can think of. Some of the scenes and dialogues are so predictable they're likely to force tears out of your eyes -- but not those of laughter or of being moved by the story. And then you learn that the Hollywood studio had bought the rights to film the novel even before the novel was *released* -- does more need to be said? This is "made-to-order" Hollywood fare -- and as a result, it's just as trashy as one might expect it to be. You can almost see the story's creator "listining" to an imagined audience: "What is it that the audience wants, what does it expect from me? Let's give it to the audience, then!" This is the exact reversal of the approach chosen by truly great works of art, where the paramount intention is not to give the audience what *they* want, but to express, as faithfully as possible, the artist's vision: what the artist feels needs to be said or shown about life, in his or her particular story.
I failed to get interested in any of the main characters in the movie. One is a mentally unhinged, alleged substitute high-school history teacher -- yet as such, he does not hesitate to recite an urban legend on the origin of the acronym "OK". Any *real* history teacher -- tenured or not -- would be unlikely to do that. It rather seemed as if this was the story's author trying to establish the character's professional credentials, but committing a guffaw instead, because an urban legend, in fact, devalues the alleged credentials, instead of confirming them.
There are many sex addicts in the world, recovering or not. Sorry, but although Jennifer Lawrence is undoubtedly an attractive actress, I did not find the character played by her one bit interesting. She's messed up, but so are millions of other people around the world -- why should we be interested in *this particular* messed-up sex addict? The same goes for her male counterpart. OK, so his wife cheated on him, and he beat her lover up to a bloody pulp, which probably isn't what a totally sane person would do. But, so what? It's happened before around the world, countless times. Why should the audience be interested in *this particular* cuckolded husband? Only because Bradley Cooper happens to be a handsome actor? The movie provides no answer, and because the two main characters are so uninteresting, the movie revolving around them is just as boring as they are.
I was also disturbed by the needless profanity pervading the movie. I don't mind profanity if it's justified by a movie's action or story, but here it seemed as if it was today's "expected standard" by the (youngish) audience, and *that's why* all the profanity was put in, just to appear "hip enough" -- not because the story or the dialogues truly demanded it.
I love movies transcending the boundaries of genres: there's nothing more sublime than a movie that is *both* a great comedy *and* a great drama at the same time, in one package. *That's* true art of movie-making. Yet this does not apply to _Silver Linings Playbook_: in fact, it suffers from the exact opposite flaw, in that it's neither a comedy, nor a drama, but rather a failure in both of those departments. It seems to vacillate on the border between comedy and drama, undecided where to go -- but it's too shallow to be a good drama, and too trite and predictable to be really funny. There's really very little to laugh or even smile about in _Silver Linings Playbook_. Instead, we're treated to some painfully extended scenes *meant* to be funny, which however are not: see all the betting hysteria going on in Pat's household, led by an over-the-top Robert De Niro.
What's worse, the movie presumes to close with the same sort of grand finale featured in many classic romantic comedies: with the heroine running away, and (ideally) the hero catching up with her. Think of _Bridget Jones's Diary_, or _The Apartment_, or _Gone with the Wind_. Now I feel guilty to mention all those phenomenally successful romantic movies in the same paragraph with _Silver Linings Playbook_ -- because the classic, romantic ending just doesn't work in _Silver Linings Playbook_, and rings hollow.
If you're looking for the top tell-tale sign of the movie's immature, juvenile nature, just watch the scene with the main character, Pat, ranting about one of the finest novels ever written, Hemingway's _A Farewell to Arms_. Erm, sorry, I still don't understand the meaning or intention of that scene. Was it meant to be funny, in showing how nonsensical Pat's objections to Hemingway's plot (and ending) were? Well, it *wasn't* funny. Or -- which is even worse -- was the scene meant to be serious, reflecting that that's what the author of _Silver Linings Playbook_ really thought about _A Farewell to Arms_? If so, you can't get any more immature than that.